Well-being

The following transcript was generated by AI and may contain inaccuracies.

Paul: Welcome to this special episode of the Forensic Focus podcast. Today I am honored to be joined by someone whose journey and work are having a profound effect on the well-being of those in high-pressure, high-risk roles. Hannah Bailey is a subject matter expert in mental health and well-being, and founder of Blue Light Wellbeing.

She works as a psychotherapist, trauma therapist and well-being coach, supporting individuals and organizations through therapy, coaching, training, and education. But what makes Hannah’s perspective so valuable, especially in digital forensics and frontline responders, is her own lived experience.

Hannah served in frontline policing for 15 years, including roles in emergency response, CID, and major crime. Her career, while fulfilling, was not without significant personal cost. She experienced burnout, PTSD, and overcame a breast cancer diagnosis – challenges that ultimately led her to leave policing and embark on a journey of recovery and reinvention through Blue Light Wellbeing.

Hannah now dedicates her life to helping others in similar roles navigate the mental health challenges they may face. She brings not only clinical expertise, but also cultural credibility. She understands what it’s like to be in these roles, the toll it can take, and what real practical support looks like.

In this episode, we’ll be exploring Hannah’s powerful journey, the founding of Blue Light Wellbeing, and how informed approaches can make a difference for those working in digital forensics and across the broader blue light community. So whether you are on the front lines, behind the screens, or supporting those who are, this is a conversation you will not want to miss. Welcome to the podcast, Hannah.

Hannah: Thank you Paul, and thank you for that lovely introduction. I’m really delighted to be here.

Paul: It is really good of you to join us tonight. So can we begin with your background?

Hannah: Yeah, of course. I know you touched on it in that introduction. So I was a serving police officer in West Midlands Police here in the UK for 15 years. And as you rightly said, Paul, this was a career I loved – really loved.

I joined at 21. I didn’t have a degree in anything else. I hadn’t done any other career, so it was absolutely the career for me. I was very passionate about it. It was my identity. I just loved it.

And I have to say Paul, because of the work and the roles and the jobs we went to, as difficult as some of them were, I would say we laughed every day. I had a great team, great sergeant. We laughed every single day and I’m sure that was part of why it was going so well at the start for me.

But things changed. As much as I absolutely felt I was going to do 30 years service in the police, as we do in the UK, and that was going to be me… As you will know, life throws us curve balls, doesn’t it? Changes that we did not plan along the way. And I certainly didn’t.

It absolutely does, doesn’t it? And so I’ve learned that’s probably the biggest lesson I’ve learned. It did exactly that to me. So I would say probably for about two years before I left, my mental and emotional health went downhill.

It wasn’t one big thing that happened or one awful job, because I know that can be the case for some people. But I think probably the majority of officers or frontline workers who are struggling – it’s probably that repeated exposure, that sort of drip effect that we hear a lot about in frontline roles.

And I’d say that was the same for me. I didn’t think there was anything that had particularly affected me. I felt I dealt with it all really well, but obviously not. We had no training, did we Paul? No education, no awareness of it. There was a huge stigma and taboo, which I was part of by the way. I was part of that culture because I didn’t know any different.

And I would say there were a lot of changes at work as well. It wasn’t just the jobs that we were dealing with – there were a lot of changes within the structure and teams at work. And I had a lot going on at home as well for about those two years. Some issues at home.

So I think it was like a sort of melting pot for me – everything coming at once. I just didn’t have any space to deal with anything, think about anything, have a breathing space. Nothing at all. And I became quite unwell.

So as you touched upon, I had undiagnosed PTSD at the time. I wouldn’t have known what that was. I wouldn’t have even really known that phrase, I don’t think Paul, at the time. And I think I would’ve just carried on. And I did carry on because I had no idea what to say, who to turn to, who to talk to.

So I did try and carry on. And I think I probably would’ve done that until I broke. But another intervention came and I found a lump in my breast. And as you said, I had breast cancer.

So I went through breast cancer the way I think you should – the way I was taught to in the police – which was grit your teeth, put a smile on your face and get on with it. And I did. I was determined I was going to fight it and battle it and get through it and put it behind me. And so I did that.

And I didn’t face anything about how I’d got to that point, Paul, at all, or how sick I really was at the time. So after nine months off work, I went back to policing. Even with everything I had been through, I still wanted to be a police officer.

I didn’t know how else to be or where else to work or where else I might fit if I wasn’t a police officer. I had no idea. So the only option I felt was to go back to policing, determined that I would do something different and it would be different and I might look after myself. But again, I had no idea how to do that or what that entailed or what that meant.

So actually I had cancer twice. My cancer came back within a year. It had mutated, so very rare, very aggressive, with a very poor prognosis of survival.

And I think it was only then – and it probably should have been earlier than that – but only then did I wake up really and think, “I have actually got to face what’s going on here and why I am so sick.” So actually, in the end, I didn’t do chemotherapy or radiotherapy that second time.

My prognosis with those treatments was so poor and I just realized I had to rethink everything. Actually, Paul, reassess everything. I learned how to… I went to Germany for medical treatment in the end. But I researched how to be well long term – mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually even.

I just thought there’s going to be no stone unturned. I’m going to find out how I get better and how I stay better, which I think is really important – to consistently be well, not just put a bit of a sticking plaster on and hope it will all go away, which is what I’d done so far.

And so yeah, part of that was resigning from the police for me, which even with everything I’d been through was so difficult. I was devastated to leave policing. I can see you nodding your head, so I’m sure you felt the same as well. Even with everything, I was devastated.

But it was the right choice for me, and I became very well. I faced it all – what I needed to through therapy – but physically as well. I changed my lifestyle and how I looked after myself and became very well. I realized that I probably had some skills there from policing that I could actually help others with and turn it around. I decided to retrain professionally, as you said, and come into a different career. So yeah, that’s how I come to be here today.

Paul: I think you’ve touched on so much there. Can I ask, during the period where you did become unwell through suffering from PTSD, et cetera, and then of course that awful news about breast cancer on top of that, what support did you get from the force you were working with?

Hannah: None at all. I’m sorry to say that. And I want to stress here – my sergeant and inspector were nice guys, by the way, so this is not about them being horrible people. They were nice people. And I had good practical support in that I had nine months full pay.

There are lots of jobs that would not do that. And that was an incredible gift financially – to give us that security through that time. I’m not somebody who sits here and police bashes because that’s not what it’s about. And it’s not useful. It isn’t.

But it’s about learning, because nobody had a clue mentally or emotionally, including me, how to support me through any of that at all. So yeah, no emotional and mental support at all. But practically, yes, good. And they were clear that I had the time that I needed to physically get well.

I just had no idea how to mentally and emotionally get well, and nor did they, to be honest, Paul. So yeah, we were all blind leading the blind a little bit through that period of time.

Paul: I asked the question because I quite often hear from DFIs and other people still in policing that the support they are provided is minimal at best, but in quite a few cases there actually isn’t any. And I still find that astounding.

When you consider – and I’ve said this many times now – you send a cop out onto the street, they go out with body armor, tasers, gas, you name it. They’re fully equipped to be protected physically. When it comes to mental health support, there are apps, but there is next to nothing there.

For me, that just doesn’t make sense because once someone becomes susceptible to the stressor, then it takes an awful long time to recover from that. So you’re losing that staff member or those staff members while they’re recovering. Yet that could be averted by putting in a proactive approach to doing this.

For me, it just doesn’t make financial sense not to have it there, not to have it available when it’s needed.

Hannah: Yeah, a hundred percent. And not only available when it’s needed, but – and I think you and I are probably both passionate about this – in a proactive sense as well. Because I just think policing is very reactive, isn’t it?

It’s very reactive and certainly when I was in there, we reacted to hotspots and crime spots and so on and so forth. And it’s got better over the years at looking at that proactively. How do we fight crime or hotspots or that sort of school to prison pipeline? How do we look at that proactively? And I’m like, surely that applies to mental health and wellbeing as well.

If we look at it proactively, how much of a difference we could make – not just to those individuals but the organization as a whole, the community. Every single person and group benefits if we look at it proactively.

Paul: I cannot agree more. Police have developed over the years. They are professionals out there. I’m absolutely not here to police bash if you like, because I’ve got the utmost respect for those men and women who go out on the streets and put their lives on the line on a daily basis.

Hannah: Yeah, absolutely.

Paul: In the same way, DFIs sit in front of screens every day and they are exposed to the depths of humanity. And in both cases, their caseloads are ever expanding. And there are a lot of stats out there to prove this. Yet when it comes to the development of mental health services, they stay stagnant. They haven’t changed for years.

Hannah: It is astounding. And what I would say is the shame as well, Paul, is that it’s not uniform – excuse the pun – but it’s not uniform across the forces. And I don’t know in terms of the digital forensic world, but I’m sure you could tell me if it’s uniform across different companies and organizations.

But I’m lucky enough because I’m freelance – I work with so many different police forces, and you get forces with no mental health and well-being budget. Zero. And you get forces that are really getting there with that proactive aspect coming in. They have good support, good awareness, less stigma.

So it’s really different across different police forces as well, which is such a shame because it is a little bit of a postcode lottery, and that’s a shame.

Paul: You’ve just taken the words out of my mouth. I was just going to say to you, I talk to so many DFIs across the country and some DFIs have got a great service going on. Outside of law enforcement, I know there are some private companies who are really proactive around the mental health of their employees because they want to protect them and realize the value in them.

But then you talk to other DFIs who tell you there is either nothing or the bare minimum, which isn’t even a sticking plaster in some cases. And you are exactly right. I think you used the term postcode lottery. It is exactly that. It depends where you work and what the budget is for that force, whether you get a reasonable amount of support or not.

But that shouldn’t be the case. It should be unified across the country with standards set so that DFIs are fully supported. That’s what I’ve been campaigning for a very long time now.

Hannah: Also because I think certain roles are seen as more high risk. And I do think with digital forensics – because it’s perhaps not the same physical risk for them – I don’t think it’s seen, perhaps sometimes by forces, as the risk that it is. And I would say the role they do with the constant viewing that they are exposed to – certainly in terms of mental health and well-being – they must be one of the most high risk. I would suggest that.

Paul: Absolutely. I can’t think of another job either in or outside of law enforcement which is such a constant trauma-facing role.

Hannah: Yeah, I agree. And also, because when you are looking at stuff on screens or any of the digital formats all the time, you are not getting that same human connection that you might do on a team going out to a job or even just being crewed up in a car with somebody. And then, I don’t know, like all going out to a job as a team to put a door in or something.

So you’ve got more isolation kicking in, I would say, in a digital forensics role than you do in traditional sort of frontline policing. And that would then always increase the risk of the trauma exposure.

Paul: I would absolutely agree. Can we talk about some of the work that you do with DFIs and other forces and such?

Hannah: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. So I do a mix of things really. In terms of going into different forces or other similar organizations like the NCA – those kinds of law enforcement or investigation roles – I go in and really do different types of training and education, I would say.

Depending on what a team is struggling with at the time. So often around resilience, overwhelm, burnout, PTSD. I go in and talk about my personal experience, because as you just said, that helps a little bit with that credibility, that connection. They know I understand their world.

It really does because they know that what I’m talking about, I really genuinely understand. And I’m genuinely trying to find those ways to help them – not in a bit of a tick box type way. So that would probably be the most common areas that I go in and help those roles with.

But sometimes it’s quite specific, so it might be around FLOs, SIOs. So particular types of roles they’re undertaking. Child sexual exploitation is a really common one because the level of trauma is just so high.

Sometimes the other one as well is change management. So a lot of companies and businesses have change management specialists and that sort of thing. I’m not one of those – I didn’t mean that badly either to change management specialists. Sorry. Nothing wrong with what you do, but I don’t do that.

But I do it in terms of the mental health side of significant change within an organization, because I know how much it affected me, Paul. At a time that I was struggling, we also went through significant change on the teams.

I didn’t know my supervisors, I didn’t know any of my colleagues. And I think that matters so much when you’re in such high risk and demanding frontline roles. You really need to feel comfortable to be able to speak out, and if you don’t know anybody or you don’t trust them…

And also Paul, I thought that they didn’t really know me, so they didn’t know my reputation – that this wasn’t me. It was really unlike me to struggle or not settle or not be able to deal with jobs in the same way. That was so unlike me. So I felt they didn’t know me either. So I didn’t want to speak up and say I was struggling.

Significant change in these types of roles in organizations is a massive impact on mental health and well-being. And so I often go in as well and deliver inputs and training around that. So yeah, that’s what I tend to do for organizations.

And then I work with individuals as well with trauma therapy and well-being coaching. And I think that’s really important to highlight because, again, you and I would be passionate about people… It would be so great if people came a bit earlier. It really would.

So I think it’s one of the myths I like to dispel if I can about therapy. I think people think – certainly in these roles – you go when you’re broken and you are on your knees. And I do get, of course, people who come at that stage, but it’s lovely if I actually get people that are coming earlier – maybe struggling or something not going quite right and they could just do with a bit of help, support, that coaching side.

And it’s really useful. And like you said, much quicker, that proactive side – much quicker to get you back on your feet and get you back into the role or work or life that you love. So yeah, it’s one of the myths I want to help dispel: please come earlier if you can, when you’re struggling and just need a bit of support.

Paul: This is why I’m a big advocate for the proactive approach to mental health, whether it be in digital forensics or uniform frontline cops or indeed, private companies who employ DFIs. Because for me, the proactive approach could take the form of psychoeducation prior – long before anybody succumbs to the stressor, should I say.

If, in my opinion, individuals are taught about what PTSD is, what it looks like, what the signs and symptoms are, how it can affect you physically, how it can affect you mentally, then the earlier they recognize those signs and symptoms and are then able to find the help to reduce them, then the stronger they become, the more resilient, the more productive they continue to be. And I advocate for that time and time again. Mental health support needs to develop.

And I think that echoes beautifully in what you’ve just said.

Hannah: Yeah, and it’s interesting that you said the word psychoeducation, because that is what I start nearly every training input with. Because if we don’t understand how the brain works well and how it processes stress, shock, and trauma – which our brains can do really well and really efficiently, and it’s set up to do that.

But what happens when it goes wrong? What does it look like when it goes wrong or feel like? As you said, what are those signs and symptoms? And then really importantly – we were discussing this, weren’t we, just before we started – the fact that we can put this right. Actually we can recover from this.

And you and I are sitting here as examples of that, having both been through our struggles with PTSD and mental health and are really well. Doing really well, really healthy, really balanced. That function in our brains to process stress and shock and trauma is back fully functioning again, and it’s absolutely repairable and recoverable. It’s such an important part of that education for them.

Paul: It absolutely is. Like you said earlier, taking that decision to resign was one of the hardest things you’ve ever done. I absolutely know where you are coming from. I will openly say, when I walked out of the station on my last day, I was in tears.

Hannah: Yeah.

Paul: But at that point, I had some level of insight into the fact that I was really unwell. And I remember vividly the first time I met the therapist who I worked with. I was absolutely terrified.

Hannah: Yeah.

Paul: Absolutely terrified to open that box and share what was inside. I’m thankful that the therapist that I worked with was absolutely amazing. She just got it.

Hannah: Good.

Paul: But I’m thankful also that she was culturally aware as you are. Because I recently attended a conference and this really shows how important it is to have a background such as yours.

I was recently at a conference where one of the delegates told me that they were a practicing DFI and they shared that they had a psychologist who regularly came in to see them, which they benefited from massively. But during a group session that was being held, one of the DFIs shared a particularly traumatic case, which upset her so much she left and never came back again.

Now I have to say from my point of view, the message that sends to a DFI is “nobody can deal with this.” Whereas, because you’ve lived it, you haven’t just done the job, but you’ve lived the experience of being unwell. You’ve lived through the stresses and you’ve come out the other end a much stronger, more resilient, better person. And I think the cultural awareness attached to therapy is highly underrated right now. I don’t think people realize the value of that.

Hannah: Yeah, no, I completely agree with you. In fact, I think the people going for therapy absolutely value that, like almost more than anything actually. But I don’t think perhaps leaders and organizations do, and they set up, let’s say an EAP, and as long as that’s provided and funded… I think sometimes, if I’m honest, they’re not that bothered how effective it is. It’s just set up and it’s available. That’s being honest.

And you are absolutely right and I hear this actually time and time again, exactly what you’re saying. I had a client who was involved in something incredibly traumatic and before she came to me was detailing that to her counselor. And the counselor got almost a little bit cross and said, “Look, you do know this is distressing for me, don’t you, as well?” when my client was crying. I know. I can see you shaking your head. Exactly. That’s what I was like. I just don’t think you should be a therapist, I’m going to be honest, if you can’t hear other people’s trauma.

But yes, that cultural awareness. And so of course my client felt like she couldn’t talk about that, that she was upsetting the counselor. But also, as you said, you just think “my trauma must be so awful. A counselor can’t hear it and a counselor’s upset by it.”

So you just start to think that you’re in this most awful place that you can’t recount this hideousness that’s in your head and that you can’t get better from it or be relieved from those traumas that it’s causing. And that’s not the case at all.

And yeah, you are right. For me, I don’t want to sound like “aren’t I hard-nosed?” But it doesn’t shock me and there isn’t anything that’s going to shock me I don’t think anymore. I can listen to that as both a therapist and an ex-police officer who has been on both sides of those, and I think that’s really important.

Paul: I think it’s super important.

Hannah: Yeah.

Paul: The sad thing is there aren’t that many culturally aware therapists.

Hannah: And that is the shame, isn’t it? We need people to leave policing and come and be a therapist. And I think that’s growing, Paul, if I’m honest. As we’re talking, I think it’s growing, but you’re right. There’s not enough.

I think you can be… Are there people out there that I’ve met as therapists and they’re not ex-police or whatever, and just seem to have an innate understanding, to be fair to them? Yeah. I don’t know where that comes from, but they do seem to have an innate understanding and a way of taking on that type of job and trauma.

So can it exist without our backgrounds? Yes, it can. But is it much more credible or likely if you’ve had our backgrounds? Yes. Probably.

Paul: Yeah, I agree. So I know you trained in Brain Working Recursive Therapy. Can you tell us about that and how that applies to the therapeutic process?

Hannah: Absolutely. So just to say again from a client perspective, how I found BWRT was looking for a therapy for my PTSD. So I had been in probably more traditional therapy, if you want to call it that, for about 18 months, two years. And it was useful. This is not me saying that’s not useful – it was, and I had got to a much better place and was doing much better.

But I still had what I would phrase as hideous flareups of PTSD. Hideous. And they would just overcome me, probably last for about three days of physical pain, almost paralysis, anger, shame, bitterness – it all came out Paul in those three days. So it was not a pretty sight.

I couldn’t work, that kind of thing. I just survived really for the three days or so, and then felt like I’d been in a punch up and a fight for about a week afterwards. And then would get back to life and my normal life as it was then – in a better place.

So I was searching really for something that I just thought, “I just don’t want this anymore. I don’t want to manage PTSD anymore. I do not want it.” And they are different things. The reason I found BWRT was through searching online.

One of the things I loved about it is that you actually don’t have to recount your trauma in great detail. And I hadn’t really heard of that before and I felt I’d done a lot of that with the two years of therapy I’d had. And you don’t, and that’s quite unusual for therapy.

So you obviously have to know some of the content of what people have been through, but I think if you think of policing, of DFIs, all that, you actually don’t have to recount the trauma in great detail. And it really spoke to me that would be something I’d like to do and it’s quite quick and effective.

And I just thought, “I’m going to go for it.” And it was brilliant and it was all that it just said and promised, and I have never, ever had since then any flare ups of PTSD. I’ve had no nightmares, no flashbacks, nothing like that, no symptoms at all of PTSD. So incredibly life changing for me. And so I decided to train in it as well.

I was already a well-being coach but I thought actually people were coming to me with more trauma because of my contacts and backgrounds. I didn’t really feel equipped to deal with that as just a well-being coach. I thought, “I’m going to train in this.” So I gained my qualifications in it as well.

Level one and level two – they’re not actually better than each other. Level one and level two are just different approaches, different ways of dealing with trauma. And it absolutely transformed how I dealt with trauma clients. It’s just been incredible since that time.

And I also wanted to do more qualifications. I like learning. So you can never stop learning about the brain and the body really, can you Paul? To be honest. So I do, I love learning as well, but I wanted to get those qualifications to be recognized in this field.

And so I did a level seven post-grad in trauma therapy as well. And as fantastic as that was, and as much as it massively added to my skillset, understanding, education – it is still BWRT that I go back to with nearly every client.

Paul: Incredible. It’s interesting that you’ve got such a wide skillset actually, because that must allow you to pull from each therapy if you like, to individualize it for a client.

Hannah: Yeah, absolutely. And I do love that bit of it because people might come with really similar stuff, but everybody’s different aren’t they? And there is not a one size fits all with therapy. So I do love that side and I love that.

Where I’d say my trauma therapy and BWRT comes in is helping almost with all your past stuff, if that would be the right word. We help resolve or move or shift that trauma. But the well-being coaching is like looking ahead and how do you move ahead now? Because therapy can be great, but I would like people to be well long term.

So how do I help them with that? What does that structure look like? The boundaries, what skills or experiences could they try or give a go or be open-minded to? So I love that it’s all encompassing. I hope with those different hats that I wear.

Paul: I’m actually smiling, because what you’ve just described is the therapeutic process that I went through myself.

Hannah: Brilliant.

Paul: So all I expected was for the therapist to deal with the weight I was carrying of the trauma that I had been exposed to. What I didn’t expect during the process is the fact that she was going to make me stronger going forward.

Hannah: Yeah. Brilliant.

Paul: And she absolutely did. The process itself – speaking from experience, for me personally, it was a difficult one to start with, but as the process went on, it became a lot… I don’t want to say easier, but a lot smoother. It became almost natural to open up and discuss really difficult things with her. And just like you, I came out the other end a much better, much stronger, much more resilient person for it.

I’ve been asked, like we discussed earlier, I’ve often been asked, “If you had to go back into therapy, would you do it?” In a heartbeat.

Hannah: Yeah, agreed.

Paul: Knowing what I know now, I would do it in a heartbeat.

Hannah: A hundred percent and I would do it earlier, certainly for me as well. When people say “I should have come to you earlier,” I say, “Look, I had PTSD and two lots of cancer before I woke up and realized I better have therapy.” So I get that. I’m the queen of avoiding therapy, but so I really understand.

But a hundred percent I would do it. I’d do it again and I’d do it earlier. And Paul, I have to have supervision for the work I do. And so it just becomes natural just to take this to them, talk it through, let’s find a solution. Let’s work it through.

If I need a cry, I don’t often now because I’m in a different place, but if I need a cry with some of the stuff I hear all the time, then I have a little cry or get angry or get despairing, and then we work it out and I’m good to go. So I know the benefit of it. So does my brain. It knows that. It knows it will be better once we’ve done that.

Paul: So you’ve just mentioned something really interesting there, and it’s something that I’ve thought if it was applied in digital forensics as a proactive approach, as part of the proactive approach, it would help spot those early warning signs. And that is, you mentioned supervision right now, just like you.

As I work in the NHS now as a psychologist, I get weekly supervision where I go and talk to a colleague of mine who is also a qualified psychologist, and we will talk about the caseload that I’ve got and how I feel about that.

It is an excellent opportunity, not just to offload, but to gain another opinion on difficult cases that you’re working with, which massively helps reduce stress that you’re carrying.

Hannah: Hugely.

Paul: I’ve often thought, and I’ll be interested to hear your views on this, if this was applied in digital forensics, whether it be a weekly or biweekly meeting with say a mental health first aid trained individual, I’ve often thought that would in itself help DFIs offload.

Hannah: I completely agree. And what we’re missing is there are so many benefits, not just the offloading as you said. I mean that in itself… And everybody knows that, don’t we Paul? If you just go and meet a mate at the pub and offload, that feels better, that feels nicer. So we know that helps people to come in, talk and offload.

There are so many other things as well. If you are sitting with somebody trained, they can look for certain signs, certain words, certain… even just facial expressions or how the energy or the mood drops when they talk about certain things or people about their job.

So that trained person could look for things as well. But the other thing we’re missing is, again, which I didn’t have, but I do have with supervision, is building that trust. And if you saw somebody every week or even every month, just even to chat if you want, about holidays…

What happens in the brain is that you start to build trust, connection, rapport, relatability, credibility, all those things so that if there’s a time that DFIs or anybody else needs to then say “this has actually been really shit,” or “I’m struggling with my workload” or whatever that is, it’s 10 times easier to say to somebody that you’ve been meeting every week, every month, and have gotten to know, and got to trust and got to relax around, and all those things that the brain likes. It loves all those things, and we would be providing that for them and it would make it 10 times easier to start having those conversations earlier.

Paul: Yeah, I absolutely agree. It’s all about building that safe, non-judgmental space where someone can genuinely offload and become far more relaxed and de-stressed than when they walked through the door, isn’t it? It’s about building up that trust.

Hannah: Yeah, and I think coming back to that, as you said, that cultural awareness and credibility, I think that trust already is built. When they come to people like you or me, because we’ve had those backgrounds and those roles, there’s already a level of trust there.

They know I’m not going to judge them. For example, if they want to… people talk to me as I’m sure they do to you about these horrific jobs and they often talk quite clinically, quite coldly, quite matter of factly. There’s no particular tears or distress about some of it. And they know I don’t judge that. That’s not because they’re these cold monsters or anything. That’s just how they have to talk about their work.

And that’s completely normal to me actually. And also making jokes about it and stuff – those are all completely normal. So that trust and that non-judgment bit is there already.

Paul: It is. And when you talk about the clients that come to you and the way they talk about the trauma that they’ve been exposed to, I think from my point of view, when I reflect, you talk about it so openly with someone who understands, and to quote you, in quite a cold manner because you become normalized to it.

Hannah: Yeah.

Paul: It’s what happens, it’s what you’re used to. It’s what you see every day.

Hannah: Actually weirdly as well, talking about it normally I think can help the brain process it.

Paul: The way people talk about the trauma, you’re right, it must come across to people who haven’t been exposed to that in quite a cold way, but you become normalized to it. It becomes their normal, doesn’t it?

Hannah: Yeah it really does. And I think actually that’s right. I think there’s a line, isn’t there, Paul? Between having to normalize what they see and deal with – they have to, or their brain won’t process it at all. If everything is this incredibly heightened times a hundred trauma, their brain won’t be able to process that every day.

So if they normalize it, you can process it much better. But I know it also moves into a line of when you’re so desensitized that you lose all emotion or all connection and stuff. And that starts to affect, obviously, as we know, your private life and your relationships.

And I think it’s quite a fine line to be fair for DFIs, for law enforcement – how emotionally involved you remain in your job, but in your life as well. So yeah, I think they have to normalize it to a level that hopefully remains healthy.

Paul: Yeah, we’re drawing to a close now. Hannah, do you have any final words for the DFIs and everyone else watching out there?

Hannah: I think we’ve touched on it a bit, but if you don’t mind me just finishing off, I want to dispel a few myths a little bit really with modern therapy because I think it’s part of the stigma of people not coming forward. So maybe we could dispel some of them.

Just to finish off, my first one I’ve already touched on: please don’t think you have to be broken to come for help. You really don’t. So come as early as you’d like. Even if just for a chat to talk something through, to get different boundaries, different structure, whatever. Come as early as you’d like. Please don’t wait if you just want some help.

The second is that, again, we’ve touched on this – modern therapies have really moved on and absolutely there is a place for talking in depth regularly with a counselor or a therapist, but there are lots of different modern therapies and BWRT is one of them, but there are lots of others.

That genuinely are moving people on differently, more effectively, more quickly. So come and explore the different therapy options. Chat to people, chat to specialists, get word of mouth, anything like that, but explore it before you shut it down and think “I’ll just be stuck in therapy for two years and not move on” or “lying on a couch” or whatever people think therapy has to be.

Paul: Which is not the case, not these days, right?

Hannah: Really not. No, it’s really not. It’s got much more modern. Do your research and find somebody. I think any therapist worth their salt would give you a free consultation. I do. So that you can chat, ask questions: what does it involve? How long, roughly might this take? Costs involved, that sort of thing. So yeah. It’s really different now. Give it a go and give it some research.

And then lastly – and I’m so glad we are both on this page – accepting that you need therapy is not some downward spiral to the end of your career or life. It’s really not. In fact, the opposite for you and I, isn’t it Paul? This was absolutely the door to me being well and stronger and more positive and having this amazing life that I have now.

So this is not a one way street with no light at the end of the tunnel. It can be a really positive, life changing for the good approach to take. So yeah, I’d love people to know those things about therapy.

Paul: Thanks for that. I really appreciate those final words. I think people watching will realize it’s not a sign of weakness to seek therapy. It’s actually strength.

Hannah: It really is. Yeah.

Paul: It really is. It takes a lot of strength to do it. It takes a bit of strength to begin it, but as you progress, it gets easier and you become a much healthier person.

Hannah: You really do and actually you’ve touched on the best bit, honestly. The hardest bit is probably writing that email or text or whatever to a therapist and then going to the first session. That probably is the hardest bit. And I promise after that, pretty much for me, you and all my clients, it gets easier from there on. It really does.

So yeah. Get through that really horrible first bit and it gets better.

Paul: It really does. And I speak from experience when I say that.

Hannah: Yeah. Me too.

Paul: Hannah, it’s been amazing. Thank you very much for joining us tonight. We will include your contact details. I’m sure if anybody sees this podcast – obviously we’ll share your contact details – if they reach out to you, I’m sure you’d be happy just to speak to them as well.

Hannah: Always. And I think that’s what we try to make as accessible as possible. Just reach out, drop me an email, we’ll have a chat. No pressure at all. Let’s just talk through where you are and what options there are and we can go from there.

Paul: Fantastic. Thanks again for joining us, Hannah.

Hannah: Thank you so much for having me on.

Paul: My pleasure. Bye-bye.

Hannah: Bye-bye.

The following transcript was generated by AI and may contain inaccuracies.

Paul: Welcome to Forensic Focus, the podcast where we explore the critical issues shaping the world of digital forensics and those who work within it. I am your host, Paul Golden, and in today’s episode, we are going to shine a spotlight on the growing area of concern in our profession: mental health and wellbeing.

Those of us who spent time working in digital forensics understand the toll this work can take. Exposure to traumatic material, high case loads, relentless deadlines, and the weight of responsibility all contribute to chronic stress, burnout, and sometimes long-term psychological harm. In this episode, we’ll be exploring an innovative way to address those challenges head on.

Joining me are two exceptional guests, Dr. Zoe Billings and Mark Pannone. Co-founders of Adapt & Evolve with unique and complementary backgrounds. Zoe, as a biologist and former senior investigator in road traffic fatalities, and Mark as a former assistant Chief Constable, strategic commander and crisis negotiator.

They have combined decades of frontline and leadership experience to create a service dedicated to enhancing resilience, performance and wellbeing in high pressure professions. Together we’ll discuss the origins of Adapt & Evolve, their approach to stress, decision making and team performance, and why services like this could be vital to supporting the long-term mental health of digital forensic investigators.

This is more than a conversation about coping. It’s a conversation about evolving and adapting and finding sustainable ways to thrive in one of the most psychologically demanding roles in law enforcement. Welcome to the podcast Zoe and Mark. We’re really pleased to have you here.

Mark: Thank you. Hi.

Paul: Hi, Paul. Thank you for having us. Thanks for joining. Zoe, would you like to begin?

Zoe: Yes. So Mark, in 2019, I noticed in North Yorkshire Police where I was working that we’d got a reasonably sized occupational health department. There was a lot of work going on there to reduce stress and look after people.

But despite their best efforts, we still had people off on long-term sick. We had performance issues and some retention issues in certain areas. My background, as you said, doctor of biology – did my PhD at the University of York and I’ve tutored A-level for over 25 years.

I looked at the wellbeing provision and it focused solely around the mental health aspect, which was great – there was provision for it. But I equate it that if you teach people to recognize there’s something wrong when they recognize it as a mental health concern, you’re effectively teaching them to recognize that there’s a problem with their car when the engine seizes. And that’s too far down the line.

By that time, you’ve got to go off work, you’ve got to get your car towed, that sort of thing. I look at the biological aspects of stress because stress starts to manifest itself in the body physically whilst your brain is still saying, “I’m fine,” and it’s still pretending to carry on because from an evolutionary perspective, that’s what we’re programmed to do.

It’s not our fault – that’s hardwired in. So by looking at the biological aspects of stress, that’s the biological version of teaching you what the dashboard warning lights on your car mean. So when they come on, you can take action, get it resolved, and then your car keeps working and you keep going, and hopefully you’d never get to that point where your engine seizes.

So the biological aspects of stress – the biological wellbeing that we deliver – is effectively early intervention and prevention for stress. It stops people hopefully getting to the point where they are affected by the mental health aspects of stress, by teaching them to recognize it at the earliest opportunity, and really crucially how to then mitigate it and how to deal with it with a really comprehensive toolkit.

Paul: I think you’ve beautifully put together something here, which I quite often talk about and which I’ve talked about in the past, and that’s approaching this from a preventative point of view as opposed to a reactive point of view. You obviously identified within your force that there was no psychoeducation, for example, around the stresses that you could become susceptible to. And that’s where you come from.

Zoe: Absolutely. And I was brave slash daring enough to deliver it to our occupational health department. That could have gone one or two ways, but they took it really well. And there was that sort of recognition and that light bulb moment for them that we’ve never thought about it that way. So it got their endorsement and then the assistant chief constable saw it, which Mark could probably fill you in on what they thought.

Paul: So what did the assistant chief think, Mark?

Mark: I joined North Yorkshire Police during COVID. And it was then that I met Zoe – had the pleasure of meeting Zoe. And I was so impressed with it that I actually mandated it for those departments that were really struggling with stress that I was responsible for.

So the digital forensics unit was one of those departments. They were going through the UKAS accreditation challenges at the time, and we had a high sickness challenge within that department. DFU was one – some of the departments that were quite highly stressed, high sickness, not great performance necessarily – got them to listen to Zoe, mandated them to hear what she had to say about how to identify stress within yourself.

On the back of that I saw an improvement in both the performance and also the approach – the sort of like the feel, the culture within those teams and the self support that then went on and the self challenge within those individuals was fantastic. Because they were talking now a new language of prevention, like you say Paul, rather than individuals who, when they go pop, having to leave the organization, leave the department and deal with the unnecessary harms that could have been prevented with a more improved, resilient-based approach, a trauma informed approach.

So basically I loved what Zoe did. And then on the back of that, when I retired I then started working with Zoe. And now we go around the world. We’ve worked with the FBI – obviously we went out with yourself, Paul, in Munich last month and work with organizations throughout the UK teaching them how to identify stress within themselves.

How teams can then work to support each other. And then importantly, identify what the problems are within an organization that’s actually stopping you from thriving as an employee and how you can help yourself and your family. As importantly, look after each other, monitor each other and check each other out to make sure that things are on an even keel. And if they’re not, giving them tools, techniques, tricks to actually keep themselves in that good place rather than dealing with the adverse effects of poor decision making and poor stress management if they didn’t know this language. It really works and that’s why I’m really passionate about it.

Paul: You’ve touched on a couple of things there, Mark, which I’d like to expand on. Firstly, as a senior leader, you saw the problem.

Mark: I did. And I think the problem is with police leadership – you get to a chief officer rank, senior officer, superintendent and above, and then chief officer. You are under a lot of performance pressures. You either impose those pressures as a senior leader on others, and you’re also subject to them yourself, wherever they come from – a police and crime commissioner, from government, from your own chief constable, whatever. And that is stressful. That is difficult for anyone.

But we put no effort in teaching people how to be resilient, how to look after themselves, how to identify if things are going wrong. And it’s virtually criminally negligent, I think, that as an organization like the police, that puts people into very difficult situations, which are very hard to deal with by anyone’s standards, and not really giving people the tools on how to manage themselves both psychologically and physically.

Then it’s a case of – why do we do this? If you’re lucky, you will survive and get to the end of your career and you’ll take a pension and you’ll say “Thank God for that, I managed to escape.” Other people aren’t so lucky, and there were many people who could have continued with really impressive careers without going pop if they’d had the tools to manage themselves. And it’s those tools that we provide people with so that they can be really the best performing and most resilient that they can be. Because unfortunately, that’s what is not currently taught within policing or many other organizations I’ve seen. And that’s the gap that we hopefully fill.

Paul: I have to say as a senior leader, having spoken to many DFI around the country, do you know how rare you are?

Mark: I think the problem is that digital forensic investigators have a niche role that no one really understands. And as a leader, you want to pretend you understand everything. But because it’s such a specialist area, it’s “oh God, I really don’t understand that. I know they do great stuff and they solve loads of problems for us. But ’cause I don’t really understand it, I don’t really understand what UKAS do and I don’t really understand the ISO – I’ll just crack on and speak to the boss and hopefully everything’s going fine.”

The trouble is that digital forensic investigators are a certain type of person. There are some amazing approaches that digital forensic investigators take. And there’s a mindset and there’s a culture within DFI. The trouble is there are some problems that I have seen consistently across different digital forensic units.

And sometimes it’s about people feeling that they’ve got a voice. And I think one of the most stressful things for a lot of digital forensic investigators may not actually be the material they’re looking at – it may be – but it may actually be the fact that they feel that they don’t have a voice, they are not listened to. They’re not necessarily seen as part of the investigative framework team – part of the team.

And quite often we’ve seen this ourselves – the frustration caused by not even being notified of results in court that they were absolutely key in and pivotal in getting. That’s very stressful and it makes people feel not as valued, not having as much worth as maybe they should have. So I think we really need to recognize the type of people that work in DFI and what drives them, what motivates them and what they need.

And that’s why we go into some detail trying to really analyze what it is that the stresses are for them. And not make assumptions about what’s stressing people out, but by giving people the tools to be able to articulate, “oh, that thing is, yeah, that and that” – is it about the workplace? Is it about the kit and technology? Is it about the people you’re working with? Digging into it further, we can really help them articulate what actually is causing them problems and helping them on that journey, and then help them to address those stresses themselves.

Paul: I completely agree. It’s not just one thing that stresses DFI out. It’s not just the traumatic material. You’ve got organizational pressures, you’ve got deadlines to meet, you’ve got pressures coming in from the CPS and it all adds up. It all has a massive effect on the mental health and wellbeing of DFI who are out there at the coal face. So let’s talk about – can we talk about the proactive approach that you guys use to try and lessen the effect of the stresses borne by DFI?

Zoe: So if I kick off Mark with a bit about more about the biological wellbeing – DFI, police as a whole, law enforcement as a whole, we deal with facts and DFI very much so deal with facts, hard, cold evidence, et cetera. And so when we focus on the physical aspects of stress and say actually what actually is happening in your body and the science behind that, the evidence for that, it is an approach that really resonates with them.

Biologically our autonomic nervous system – we share that in the same pathways with all of the mammals. We share it with the birds, and we have the same pathways that the dinosaurs had, and yet we are the only species that will have stress as a comorbidity factor, because we are the only species that has that problem. And yet it’s just the same pathway as every other species.

So it’s a case of, okay, why – what’s making us different to everybody else? It’s that we use that pathway differently. We explain to them and it’s done in a really fun way. You don’t need any science behind it. It’s translated itself across, as Mark said, when we worked with the FBI, all the jokes, et cetera. It was brilliant. But yeah, and it’s a fun, engaging way of communicating the effects of cortisol, the stress hormone on the five whole body systems.

So we cover the musculoskeletal system. We cover the cardiovascular system, the gastrointestinal system, immunological system, and then fertility and sexual function and all of this – the early warning signs, the sort of dashboard lights that the body will put on in those systems that people will sit there and you can see it in their faces and they’ll be like, “I’ve got that, I’ve got that, I’ve got that.” And it’s about joining those dots up.

And once they’ve understood the science behind it, they’ve understood why their body is behaving in the way it is and why it’s not performing like it should do, and why they’re suddenly intolerant to foods that previously they’ve enjoyed, but suddenly onions are giving them gastric challenges, but they don’t understand why. And when you’ve given them the power to understand actually – yeah, okay, that’s why it’s happening – and the ability to identify that.

And then as Mark leads with the toolkit of 18 or 19 now, scientifically proven techniques that cost nothing that everybody can do to reduce their cortisol levels, to address their stress and resolve those symptoms and the impact of it. The feedback from it is incredible and the change that it makes to people is incredible. Over 3000 people have experienced this workshop so far.

And in one of our early workshops, we worked with a CEO as a quick example – medicated for high blood pressure and we teach the cardiovascular system. We teach what high blood pressure is, why stress gives you high blood pressure, what cortisol is trying to do when it increases your blood pressure, but then scientifically proven ways to reduce it.

Now three to four months after experiencing our workshop and committing to doing the activity that we’d said daily, just five minutes at a time, that’s scientifically proven to reduce blood pressure, that CEO had a medication review at the GP and was taken off their blood pressure medication.

Paul: That’s amazing.

Zoe: And that’s – yeah. When you understand exactly what high blood pressure is, how it leads to cardiovascular disease, how it will kill you, it will ruin your life, it’ll curtail your life. And in fact, they updated me last week in an email just talking about something else and said, “oh, by the way, this is over two years on now. Just had a blood pressure review at the GP and it was perfect.” And that’s medication free.

We live in a society, I think, very much in the western world where we’ve got that learned helplessness, where we have to have a tablet to fix something. You don’t. And actually, if you can remove a symptom entirely from your body rather than trying to treat it while it’s there, just by increasing your knowledge and then understanding and proactively encompassing scientifically proven things into your life to make yourself healthier and better able to perform without any medication, then that’s brilliant.

There is a place, I will just say, there is a place for medication and I would never encourage anybody to come off medication. That’s for their GP to review. But if you put yourself into a position where you don’t need it, that’s gotta be a good thing.

Paul: It absolutely has. You guys come at this from what I think is a really unique angle because we know the stressors that DFI can succumb to and the mental health effects. What there isn’t out there is a big block of research, which says, as a result of those mental health stressors, these physical ailments can come from them. And that’s where you guys come in. You guys have identified the fact that because of these stresses, DFI and others in high stress professions can then become physically ill, not just mentally ill, but physically unwell. Do you want to talk about the physical ailments that can come from this?

Zoe: Certainly. When we look at the musculoskeletal system, tension headaches, which people would expect, increased risk of migraines, neck pain, shoulder pain, but the one that people don’t understand – lower back pain. Cortisol causes your muscles to be held in tension. Your lower back hates being held in tension, and you’ll get lower back pain, but very often, and it was amusing to see that it is treated in the same way in the US as the UK.

We’ll get people a special chair and we’ll treat the symptom, but we won’t treat the cause. As I’ve mentioned, also high blood pressure because we’re trying to deliver oxygen and glucose to the muscles more quickly ’cause the brain really does believe there is an imminent threat to life. And all the associated increased risk of cardio events – so heart attacks, strokes, pulmonary thromboembolisms, where you get blood clots in your lungs, et cetera. Deep vein thrombosis, things like that.

The gastric system that relies on having a really good blood supply to function properly. And yet when we divert all the blood to the muscles because the brain thinks there’s an imminent threat to life – I’m gonna have to run or fight – it shuts the gastric system down. In the gastric system, you are still putting food into it, but you’re not giving it any of the blood and the glucose that it needs to actually make the energy to digest the food. And then you’re wondering why it can’t digest the food. You’re saying to it “go,” but I’m not giving you any fuel.

So you get things like stomach ulcers, can resolve indigestion, inflammation, temporary food intolerances, irritable bowel syndrome, colitis if you’re really unlucky, ulcerative colitis and things like that. Obviously the bloating and the discomfort and then things like your immune system that gets suppressed by cortisol as well.

You get an increased frequency of colds, of other illnesses, things like that. There is an increased risk of cancer ’cause your immune system is there to look for altered cells as well. As well as autoimmune conditions, as I’ve also mentioned already, ulcerative colitis – that’s autoimmune. Eczema, Crohn’s.

For many years they thought that they knew that cortisol exacerbated those symptoms, but it’s only relatively recently that evidence has come to light that actually says that cortisol can be a causatory factor. So actually being chronically stressed can instigate these autoimmune conditions ’cause your immune system gets so suppressed it goes a little bit haywire.

And then you’ve got also things like if you carry dormant viruses – Epstein Barr, that’s glandular fever or herpes, that gives you cold sores. If your immune system’s suppressed, you get an increased likelihood of them reoccurring, shingles, those sorts of things. All those dormant viruses that can live within us. Fertility and sexual function – erectile dysfunction in males and in females, disruption of either ovulation or menstrual cycles or both.

And it’s quite – when you let the body recover, when you remove these stresses, it’s really amazing how quickly those symptoms can disappear without any medication because you’re just letting the body do what it’s built to do.

Paul: You’ve just made me smile when you were talking about lower back pain. I remember when I was working as a digital forensic investigator, one of the things I really had was lower back pain, and I never connected the two until I heard you guys speak in Munich and I was sat there smiling away at myself thinking, “yeah, that’s why I don’t have lower back pain anymore.” Because those stresses that existed back then aren’t here now. And I don’t suffer from it, but I would never have connected the two had I not heard you guys speak.

Mark: And you’re not unique there, Paul. People do not connect what’s happening with their bodies with the fact that these could be stress related symptoms. And all we are doing is basically making people aware of what the science is behind stress, the effects that it can have and then looking at ways to address them. So I would like to think what we’re doing isn’t absolutely radical. It makes absolute sense, I think you need to have a specific knowledge of the science to be able to do this credibly. And that’s where Zoe comes in.

And then be able to, when you understand if you are stressed, then decide what is it that’s causing me stress and be able to address that issue? So linking your biology to stress a bit like Zoe’s analogy of a dashboard on a car, seeing what those warning lights are and understanding them is the very first thing, and that’s really the great teaching that Zoe does.

It’s then just a case of then working out what’s causing the stress, how to address that cause, as well as how to manage your own stress response better. So when you put all that package together, I think that’s what probably sets us apart from others because we are really delving into the why are you stressed and why is your body acting in a certain way to be able to then address the cause and not just the symptom.

Paul: I think also, and I really want to highlight this, the other thing that really sets you two guys apart from everyone else is the fact that you are culturally aware of the problems within forces. And I think it’s really important to highlight that. We saw a perfect example of why this is important in Munich.

When one of the delegates was talking, he explained they used to have a psychologist who came into the unit where they’d sit and they would have group discussions. And when I probed why it turned out that because that psychologist wasn’t culturally aware of the work or the stressors, et cetera, when a member of the team disclosed a particularly difficult case, the psychologist broke down and left and never returned. So to be culturally aware of the nature of the work and the operational stressors, I think is a massive value.

Mark: I think you’re right. Because people who work in law enforcement, invariably they don’t suffer fools gladly. They are prepared to call out worthless support in inverted commas. And we’ve all been there when we’ve seen wellbeing sessions which really haven’t been of any great use whatsoever.

So to be able to recognize and understand the stresses, to really appreciate the things that cause people most frustration, which may not be the material they’re looking at. It may be their supervision, it may be the shift pattern, it may be the organizational culture. And because we’ve been there for over 50 years between us having seen very good support and shockingly bad support then, we can get rid of all of the stuff that would be a barrier to us being able to engage with people properly and also when people I think are just saying things for the sake of saying it, we can call it out as well a little bit.

So the game players that you do have, because they want to do whatever. My 31 years of policing in a leadership role was about smelling the stuff that was put on flowers to make them grow nicely. And actually be able to say, “come on, that’s really not what the issue is – something else here.”

And that’s why we like looking at psychosocial risks around organizations. And really digging into them and understanding those pressures that people have within their organizations. And that’s why we really started to see themes and being able to tease out those themes in people, especially around communication and barriers of communication within the organizations, which really frustrates DFI because they do not feel they’re being listened to effectively, or suggestions they’ve put forward are not being heard.

So what is it about the way that they’re approaching the subject that’s stopping them being listened to by more senior management? And that’s a really interesting area.

Paul: It is. It absolutely is. And it’s frustrating for DFI because as you said, they really do feel unheard. Many of them have asked for more supportive mental health provision, and it just doesn’t come. Despite the ever increasing workload which is placed on DFI, the mental health provision has stayed static. And it stayed static for years and years, and that’s just not sustainable.

Mark: So the solution there is to do what we do, which is to go into organizations and we use the ISO 45003, which is basically looking at the psychosocial risks within an organization. So rather than, for instance, looking typically people look at health and safety from the perspective of physical risks, slips, trips, falls, all that sort of thing. You are much more likely to go off sick ’cause of the psychosocial risks.

And so we will do work with the DFI to identify what those psychosocial risks are and provide a report back to the organization and we’ll make it quite clear to say, “look, these are definite risks to the health and safety of your staff. If you do not address them, then as an organization there may be some questions asked at a later stage such as in employment tribunal, and wherever else?”

So you can use a stick to actually support this work. And when we’ve worked with organizations, we really have encouraged them to have a much different approach towards communication, towards line management, towards workflows. By actually using the psychosocial challenges and recognizing that they will get improved performance, they will get lower sickness and they will stop having to worry about retention issues by actually providing this support. Carrot and stick in the same way.

But the reports that we will provide and, we can do this over an afternoon, it’s not a difficult piece of work. We can provide an organization with a way of making sure that your DFI are working to the best of their abilities in a sometimes in a very cheap and easy way. Just by tweaking how the DFI are respected and recognized as part of the organization.

Paul: I think you, again, you touched on something really important there when you mentioned the ISO standards with regard to health and safety and wellbeing. I think many employers need to recognize that they have a legal obligation to their employees. I know police officers aren’t classed as employees, but they still have that legal obligation to protect them when it comes to wellbeing and mental health. And obviously you based your model, your services on those ISO guidelines. So it’s as good as it can be, isn’t it?

Mark: I think the ISO around the psychosocial risks that affect you in the workplace – I think it’s best endeavors. It’s the best model that’s out there, I think in looking at how to support your staff. I don’t think it’s perfect, but I think, and I can talk with experience of having been the employer at an employment tribunal where it’s not an easy ride.

But if an organization has shown reasonableness, fairness, and has deliberately gone to look for the problems and then try and resolve them. Most judicial processes will look very favorably at that. And so that’s what we are saying to organizations. We’re saying, “look, bring us in. Let us speak to your DFI. Let’s work out what it is that’s causing them problems, be it how their work is organized, be it their work environment, their equipment, or the tasks they have to do, or maybe the social factors that work.”

Looking at all of these, get them to identify what the problems are. Most importantly, identify solutions to those problems. And then organization, chief constable, chief executive, police and crime commissioner, health executive, whoever, you can then decide how to deal with those issues to make sure that people are working effectively and not then going off stressed. It is a very good business reason for doing this.

Not least the legal problems, like you mentioned, Paul, of if you don’t do this, if you are refusing to listen to people, then that could get you in quite a bit of trouble as well. So there’s good business reasons as well as good human reasons to do this.

Paul: Yeah, there absolutely is. Because obviously, the risk is that police forces could ultimately end up getting involved in litigation having caused such significant mental health problems.

Zoe: Absolutely, and I think, just saving money on the physical support that they then have to give officers and staff. When you look at the cost of, when people have their back pain, they have that special chair that they get bought – just as a daft example, we’ll treat the symptom, not the cause. Those special, better chairs cost 1200 pounds each. So what’s 1400 Euros? That’s about $1,600.

And if you’re not addressing the cause but you’re just treating the symptom, it won’t solve the back pain. And actually it’s a worthless investment. If you, and we recognize that a lot of forces, there’s a lot of financial pressures on everybody around the world, so therefore it’s even more important not to do wellbeing washing, not to get the wrong people in, not to waste investment on special chairs, when actually if you invested in the cause of the stress and resolve their back pain, they wouldn’t need additional lumbar support because it’s not a postural problem.

Then you actually will see the benefit. And I think, Deloitte said that for every one pound invested in meaningful wellbeing, you get a five pound 60 return. And that word is the one – it’s meaningful. And I think the culture has been, the wellbeing space is quite crowded. There’s been a lot of people making a lot of money historically for saying, “oh yes, I understand why you are stressed, et cetera. Here’s a stress ball and have you tried sleeping?” And a very holistic approach that hasn’t been resonating with people, that’s really made a lot of people particularly I think law enforcement people, people working in that area that look at evidence a little bit skeptical around it because they’ve had so much poor intervention by people, like you said, that don’t have that credibility, that don’t know their world.

And I’ll just, as a very quick – we were working up in the north of England and I’m not gonna swear on a podcast, so I’m gonna edit one word in this, but I overheard an inspector and he said, “oh, what’s this wellbeing rubbish we’re having this morning.” And I heard that before we were going in to deliver the biological wellbeing to them. And I thought, “game on.”

And we delivered the session and that individual didn’t know that I’d overheard them, but made a beeline afterwards for us and said, “that was” – and I thought this is gonna go one of two ways. They went “brilliant.” Because it’s probably the first time they’ve had a piece of wellbeing that’s actually been useful.

And certainly you get happier staff. There’s financial savings, which not only is it good ’cause it’s the right thing to do, it saves organizations money because people aren’t going off with the stress aspect, they’re not needing additional physical support from it. And an organization that we worked with where we delivered the psychological safety work as well as the biological wellbeing, and that caused them to just adjust their meeting structures because we don’t deliver and then disappear. We keep contact with organizations and three month check in, they said, “do you know what we’ve re arranged our Monday meeting, restructured it to make it more” and it has completely changed the whole week and the productivity and everybody. And they said something that seemed so simple. Wow, what a result.

I think people join law enforcement to make a difference. To help people. That’s what we do. That’s what we want to do. That’s what we’re passionate about.

Paul: That’s why we’re there.

Zoe: Yeah. And that’s what Mark and I do with this stuff. ‘Cause it’s supporting those that are supporting the others and we’re there to help and make a difference.

Paul: I think, as I say, I was so impressed by you guys when I saw you in Munich. I thought, no, we’ve gotta share this with our Forensic Focus audience, because your approach doesn’t just protect the investigators. It doesn’t just stop them from becoming the next one who breaks. It also increases their physical health, doesn’t it? It increases the physical health. It makes them more productive and ultimately creates a more cohesive, productive team and obviously allows DFI to remain in the role that they really enjoy doing for longer. So I’m really glad you guys have joined me today to share the services that you offer. Do you have any closing comments before we wrap up?

Mark: You’ve no idea what a hard task master Zoe is when you’re working. She, Zoe was my staff officer and I thought the relationship would be, I say she does, forget it. No, absolutely not. She is an absolute inspiration in command and control. And it’s a privilege to work with her.

Paul: Is the boot well and truly on the other foot now, Mark?

Mark: Yes.

Zoe: Not at all. I think what goes to show, I’ll smack him later. I think what goes to show that, because Mark and I have the psychological safety between us and that is really evident in our work that you can – ’cause psychological safety isn’t about being nice. It’s about being able to be honest and give feedback. And if I do something that’s really rubbish, boy do I get told about it, but in a way so that I can improve next time. And life is too short. It’s life’s too short to be – let’s have some fun, let’s have some learning. And let’s make a difference. And I think, I’ve said this is suitable for anyone with a pulse as long as they want to keep it.

Paul: Yep. I totally agree. Ladies and gentlemen, Mark and Zoe are Adapt and Evolve. Their contact details will be shared at the end of the podcast. They have a very unique outlook and very unique approach to the protection of mental health and wellbeing in digital forensics. If you want any further information, please get in contact with them. They will be only too happy to speak to you. Thanks for watching everybody. Thanks for taking part, guys.

Mark: Thank you. Cheers, Paul. Cheers.

The following transcript was generated by AI and may contain inaccuracies.

Paul: Today we’re joined by Dr. Jo Morrissey, who is the Workforce Strategy Lead at the Forensic Capability Network with a career in police and forensics that began back in 1991 as a fingerprint and crime scene examiner. That was with the Met. Jo brings with her a wealth of experience to the table.

She’s a passionate advocate for workforce development and having led initiatives in apprenticeships, recruitment and wellbeing across forensic disciplines. Jo is the driving force behind the FCN’s partnership toolkit and the introduction of the level four digital forensics apprenticeship.

Her work bridges the gaps between police and academia and industry making her a true innovator in the field. Welcome to the podcast, Jo.

Jo: Thank you Paul, and what a lovely introduction. Apart from the fact you reminded me, I’ve been in forensics for a very long time now. 31 years.

Paul: Yeah. I’m not giving away how long I was in forensics. Is there anything I missed off your CV, which we should know about?

Jo: No, I think that covers it.

Paul: Awesome. Can we start by telling us a little bit about the study that you guys are about to run?

Jo: Yeah, so the FCN have been doing quite a lot of research over the last four to eight years since we’ve existed on wellbeing. And so the current phase that we’re in is I’ve just sent out a survey.

So forensic practitioners across all disciplines, including digital forensics, but for all disciplines and worldwide, because what I’ve found from conversations with colleagues in Canada and Australia and New Zealand is we all have the same challenges.

Forensic practitioners are having the same challenges, the same wellbeing issues, wherever they are. And so I wanted to understand a little bit more about what the challenges are. Is it different for different disciplines?

So this survey has gone out to forensic practitioners, current and past in any discipline, so that we can have a look at fingerprint examiners, crime scene investigators, the DFIs, to see what challenges they have and what interventions they’ve had available to them in the workplace, which ones they’ve used, and then which ones they think are most useful.

Because I think in policing we offer a lot of interventions and a lot of tools that people can use, but I really wanted to get a good understanding of what there is, what exists, what’s been used, and how useful the practitioners found it. That’s what this survey’s all about.

Paul: Excellent. And the survey doesn’t just cover digital forensics does it? It covers traditional forensics crime scene investigators.

Jo: It covers policing. The public sector, the private sector, and those that are working independently. Any forensic practitioners, I want to know what it’s like for all of them across all of the different areas. But yeah, digital is one of them. But fingerprint examiners, DNA analysts, anyone in forensics.

Paul: Anyone in forensics.

Jo: Yeah.

Paul: Yeah. I just wanted to make that clear for those watching the podcast. So what specific wellbeing challenges are you hoping to capture across the different disciplines?

Jo: A couple of years ago we had a forensic appendix in the national Police Wellbeing Survey. And that told us a lot about the kinds of challenges that our forensic practitioners in England and Wales have.

Some of the things in relation to workloads, some of the hindrance stresses that they have to do with working hours and shifts. But what I wanted to see was, is that the same across all of the disciplines and is that the same worldwide?

I did actually live and work in the US for six years, and I was a practitioner out there. And what I found from my experience there is the people that worked with me and for me, were the same as the people that worked with me and for me in the UK. The same experiences, the same challenges, the same problems, the same wellbeing problems.

But I wanted to see, did it differ across disciplines? So our digital forensic practitioners may be affected by different things than CSIs are, than fingerprint examiners are, because for some of them it might be the primary trauma of the things they’re going to. For others, it could be secondary trauma, or it might just be the workload.

Or the shifts and the hours and the time away from their family that is actually causing the problem. So it’s to build on what we already know, because there is, as you know very well, a lack of research out there about the challenges for our practitioners in forensic science.

Paul: Yeah, there is. I’ve been giving this a little bit of thought actually, and I was thinking in terms of the traditional crime scene investigators. And quite often how small their teams are, which will of course cause repeated exposure to some quite traumatic scenes which they have to attend.

And obviously that repeated exposure would then affect them from a mental health perspective, wouldn’t it?

Jo: Yeah. Oh yeah, definitely. But interestingly, some of the things we’ve found is that it’s not actually the traumatic incident that’s affecting some of them.

It’s the fact that there’s no one to talk to when they come back. As you’ve just said, if they’re part of a very small team. And we’ve lost a lot of our canteens and places where people could get together and talk with colleagues about what they’ve been to. And that’s causing some of the challenges.

I think that there aren’t those places where you can talk with people who understand what you’ve been through and what you’ve seen. And so I think that’s one of the things that’s affecting people more is if you’re working in a small team and there’s no one to ask questions of or to talk to, that will affect you.

Paul: It’s actually quite interesting you say that because that’s reflected also into digital forensics. From the research that I’ve done, DFIs often talk about the lack of availability of a private safe space where they can go and decompress together.

Jo: Yeah, it’s not something you want to go to a friend for Costa coffee and sit and talk about, because there’s people around who don’t need to hear the things that we see.

Not everybody can go home and talk to their spouse or partner or family or friends outside of work about it because it’s not something you necessarily want to share with people who haven’t been exposed to that. And if you can’t talk to your colleagues, who can you talk to?

Paul: Exactly. And you’ve just touched on something that I quite often talk about. I’ve said on numerous occasions now, I worked in digital forensics for 14 years. I never once went home and told my wife what I saw that day. Not once.

You just cannot do it because you run the risk of traumatizing your partner or your friends.

Jo: Yeah. Yeah. Because we’re very conscious that things we’re exposed to as forensic practitioners are not things that the average person will ever see in their life. And if they did see it once, it would be a very traumatic incident for most people. And we are, as practitioners, seeing them over and over again.

And I guess even for people who probably feel they haven’t been affected or had that major incident because of it. The next scene they went to could have been the one that took them over the limit. We never really know when we’re gonna get to our breaking point with what we see.

Paul: No, we don’t.

Jo: It’s constant. And it’s also that you don’t know when you, what you’re going to see and when you’re going to see it. For a digital forensic practitioner, they don’t know what the next photograph, the next image they look at is going to be. And it could be that next one that’s the one that triggers them.

Paul: Yep. Absolutely. Absolutely. I totally agree. So going back to the survey, does the survey include any discipline specific questions to account for the differences between the disciplines?

Jo: It doesn’t include any different questions, however, there are a few that you can select different areas. And so there are some questions like what has affected your wellbeing. And so exposure to CSA material is included, which is focused on digital forensic practitioners.

That probably won’t be something that would be ticked for a lot of other practitioners, but it would be for the digital. So no, there aren’t any specific questions for specific disciplines, but it will be interesting. And that’s deliberate actually. Because I want to see how the different disciplines select the responses differently.

Paul: Yeah. Yeah. That’ll, yeah, exactly. We don’t know.

Jo: No.

Paul: Because the research is spanning multiple forensic disciplines, isn’t there?

Jo: Yeah. Yeah. There’s a paucity of research just for single disciplines. We know that crime scene investigators and digital forensic investigators are those that are highest at risk. We know that, there’s evidence for that, but there’s still not a lot of research even for those disciplines.

But for the others, the people that would be more exposed to probably secondary trauma, reading information, we really don’t know very much about them at all. So I’m really hoping that we get a little bit more information about that. And this is just the first stage of some research I’m gonna be doing.

This is just like the initial investigation, which depending on the results we get, will lead into further research moving on.

Paul: And as far as I’m aware, there’s no research out there currently which has compared the different disciplines to see if similar mental health stressors are experienced by them all?

Jo: I’ve not seen it. If it exists, I haven’t seen it, so no.

Paul: Not me. No.

Jo: Yeah.

Paul: So are you aiming for a representative sample across all forensic disciplines, or are certain groups like police employed versus the private sector being prioritized, or are they all being analyzed together?

Jo: They’re all gonna be analyzed together. I haven’t aimed for a representative sample because the way I’ve sent the survey out has been through FCN channels. It’s been to forensic leads across the country. It’s been via social media to contacts that I’ve got in police forces across the world.

I sent the survey out last Friday and I’ve already got 110 responses. Which is fantastic, including about 20 to 30 from Australia and New Zealand. So they’re really engaging with it.

And everywhere I’ve sent it out, I’ve said, please share. So it’s a snowball sampling. Just send it out to anybody. So the results I get at the moment, I’ve got more CSIs that have responded than anyone else, but it’s about a third.

Digital forensics about half CSI and then the rest cross disciplines. So I really don’t know what I’m gonna get, but no, it’s not been prioritized for anyone, public or private. Just anyone.

Paul: That’s really good. That’s really good. So what criteria are being used to assess the effectiveness of wellbeing interventions?

Jo: That’s where I guess it’s gonna be a bit subjective because it’s just the individual’s perception of how effective it was. I’ve not used any clinical measures because that’s outside of my expertise and that’s something that I think potentially we can think about as we move forward. Maybe we could do that in future, look at it, make it more clinical.

But it is going to be how the practitioner who has interacted with the intervention thinks it worked or not. So is it scientific? Is it clinical? No, but it gives us a good indication of how people felt.

As a practitioner, if you’ve done something and you feel better and you can go back to work. Then that’s worked for you. So that’s the sort of level this survey is at.

But as I say, this is just the first phase of a project that will go on hopefully for the next year or so, getting more detailed and starting to look more at it with people like you helping to look at it maybe from more of a clinical point of view.

Paul: I have to say, when the other stages start to be publicized and shared with the practitioners, I’m sure we at Forensic Focus would love to help do that.

Jo: Yeah, that’s fantastic.

Paul: So just drop me a line and we’ll get something arranged.

Jo: I will. And we’ve got some academic partners from University of Birmingham who have interacted with the questionnaire with me which is just gonna be published through the FCN. And then we are applying for ethical approval for the next stages of it through the university. So yeah, I’m happy to work with Forensic Focus as well on that.

Paul: Amazing. So will the study explore whether interventions were used preventatively, or in crisis situations?

Jo: It doesn’t, there’s not actually a question that asks that. I’m not going into that level of detail. It asks them do they know what interventions are available to them or are there any interventions available to them in their workplace? Do they know what they are?

And then there’s a long list for them to select from. Or they can add others. And then if they used them, which ones did they use? And then if they did use them, how effective did they think they were? And those are spaced on a Likert scale of whether they thought, how useful they thought they were.

Paul: Whether they were effective or not. Yeah. Is the study gonna explore barriers to accessing wellbeing services?

Jo: Some of the questions are about are the resources available to them? So rather than the barriers, it’s about what is there, what’s available? Do they know what’s available? And then there are some free text questions where they can put information like that.

I don’t ask that explicitly. But that is one of the questions I want to pursue into the next phase is what are the barriers? Why don’t they use interventions? Or if they are available to them, what are the barriers? Because we know that there are barriers.

Paul: Yeah, we do. Yeah. That’s been well researched. I think probably the biggest barrier that immediately springs to my mind is the stigma around help seeking behavior, which we all know still continues and still exists.

Jo: And that’s a really interesting point, Paul. Because one of the answers I read today from someone who submitted their form said exactly what they said, that the barriers are the stigma to asking for it or asking what’s available and then using it afterwards. There’s still a stigma for them.

Paul: Yeah, I was talking about this with someone else actually earlier today. And it wasn’t just a stigma, it was the worry that, how can I put this, the worry that it would affect their future prospects.

Jo: Yeah. Yeah. I think that’s definitely, as I say, just looking at this one answer that I looked at today, that was exactly what it said. They’re worried about their career prospects. They’re worried about, especially for digital forensic practitioners, they’re really concerned that if they say I’m struggling at the moment, and I don’t really want to look at any more of these images, that they’re gonna be taken away from the job that they love.

And sometimes they just need a short break. Sometimes a month, two months, three months out doing something else is all they need. And then they’re happy to come back. Or maybe they’re happy to do three days a week looking at it, but they’d like two days doing something else.

But they’re worried that if they ask for that, they’ll be moved out of the section and away from doing a job that they love.

Paul: Yeah, I can echo that. I’ve spoken to dozens of DFIs through the work that I do with Forensic Focus, and it is a common theme that they are terrified to speak up and say, I need a break in case they are moved away.

And the problem is with many DFIs are civilian investigators and unlike police investigators who would just be moved to another section, another shift, another department. That’s not the case for civilian DFIs, is it?

Jo: No. You’re right in policing in England and Wales, that is a challenge. What else do you do if you’re not doing your primary role? There’s only so many project teams or validation studies that can be done.

And so for managers it is, to be fair to managers, it’s a challenge for them because they’ve got backlogs and workloads that they need to meet, and if they identify that their practitioners need to move, it’s like, where do I put them? There’s nowhere for me to put them to do something. And I need somebody else to fill that space.

And it’s not that easy because they’re skilled, trained practitioners, highly trained practitioners. And so it is not an easy answer for anybody, but what we need to do is build it into practices so that everybody gets that respite, whether they ask for it or not, everybody gets it so that we are protecting everyone.

Paul: Yeah. Yeah, I agree. So has the survey received ethical approval from a university or a professional body, or is it something that’s being managed by the FCN?

Jo: Yeah, it’s being managed internally by the FCN. It’s been reviewed by our internal departments. So we are compliant with GDPR and all the things that we need to be.

It’s not going to be published in any professional journals. It’s part of an FCN report that we are going to issue, that we will share. But it’s not gonna be an official publication in relation to a journal. But it will feed into that kind of research going forward.

So that’s why I said stage two, which I’m hoping to do some interviews with practitioners, will go through an ethical process with the University of Birmingham, get it ethically approved so that we can then publish our results in a professional journal, in an appropriate journal.

So this report will be shared. It will be available to everybody who’s taken part and everyone in policing. So it needs to be done so that it benefits people. I don’t wanna write a report that just sits on a hard drive somewhere. It needs to be something that is useful and usable.

Paul: I was gonna ask, how are the findings gonna be fed back? So will they be published via the FCN website?

Jo: Yeah, so it’ll be an open report on our website. And I’ll also share it obviously with any police force who’s interested in reviewing it, or forensic practitioner who wants to review it.

Paul: Yeah, I was gonna say, if you could share it directly with us and we could share it via Forensic Focus.

Jo: It’s not gonna be something that is a protected document only available to UK law enforcement. Everyone will have access to it.

Paul: So from all the research that’s being done, obviously it’s very early stages for this study, but from all the research that’s being done, do you think there might be an intention to develop new national guidelines on minimum standards for the provision of wellbeing based on the research as a whole? In the UK.

Jo: I think it will definitely form part of the discussion for national standards. So previous work that I’ve done on wellbeing for practitioners has been shared with Oscar Kilo and they’ve, which is our national police wellbeing service in the UK, in England and Wales. And they’ve been really interested in what we’ve done.

The results from this will be shared with them as well. And we are engaged in that conversation constantly through the National Police Chief’s Council on how we can make sure that we protect the wellbeing of our staff and whether it will lead to minimum standards or guidelines.

Minimum standards are exactly what I would like to see that we do issue some kind of good practice. This is what we would expect, and if we could have some kind of national guidelines that everyone had to follow? That would be the ideal.

Paul: Yeah, it would. Something that quite often crops up during conversations that I’ll have with DFIs is the fact they do mention the guidelines that are published quite often around digital forensics by Oscar Kilo, which I have to say I have read and they are really good.

There’s some really good guidelines, really good pieces of work published by Oscar Kilo. But because the guidelines, they are not being put in place on the ground. So whereas if it were national standards, then there would have to be adhered to,

Jo: Yeah. So I work with the National Police Chief’s Council, Recruitment Retention and Wellbeing Investigators Group. And they are very keen. They’re looking at the wellbeing of investigators across the whole of policing.

So this will also be fed back into the work that they’re doing and they’re the NPCC body that would lead. So I would love it to become minimum standards. Definitely. That’s what I would like to see.

National guidelines everyone has to adhere to. But I think before we can have those guidelines, we need the evidence base to support that. And that’s why we’re doing this, so that those guidelines aren’t just based on what you or I think they’re actually based on the evidence from research.

I think it might be a way before we get those standards because as we’ve already said, there’s a lack of research, there’s a lack of evidence, and it needs to be evidence based to support it, to make sure we’re doing the best for our practitioners.

Paul: I absolutely agree. It’s something I’ve thought about quite a lot actually, because from an operational point of view, you’ve got ISO 17025, which has come in, and it dictates the procedures and policies around the actual work that’s done in the labs. So it makes everything safe and sound and secure. Yet the same approach isn’t applied to the wellbeing of forensic practitioners, is it?

Jo: No. And that’s because those guidelines you are talking about? The forensic regulation that we’ve got, it’s based on research, it’s based on validation of methods, and we’ve not done that with wellbeing. We’ve never really analyzed it and we’ve not got enough of an evidence base.

We’ve got some research, but not enough, and so that’s where the work that you’ve done, the work that we are doing, the work that others out there are doing. Because it is becoming, people are aware of how much of a risk it is to our workforce.

And so people are really keen on it and there is some research going on now. Hopefully we will get that depth and quality of research and responses so that we’ve got the evidence base so that we can create those minimum guidelines so that forces are obliged to stick to them.

Paul: And I think what you’ve just said about those kind of guidelines being based on evidence, which comes from the research that you do, just shows how important it is for practitioners to actually take part and complete this survey that is going out via Forensic Focus.

Jo: Yeah. I would love to get a thousand responses. My analysis would be difficult, but it would be fantastic. As I say, it’s only been open four days and I’ve already got 110 responses or something. We are doing well and a lot of those have come internationally already.

I’m really keen to get as many responses as we can. We’ve got 4,500 forensic practitioners in the UK. If we could get at least 10% of those to respond, it would be fantastic.

Paul: It would be amazing, wouldn’t it?

Jo: Yeah.

Paul: And that would really put quite a lot of weight behind the requirement for national standards, wouldn’t it?

Jo: Yeah. And that was the problem with the National Police Wellbeing Survey that gets filled out every year. The response rates are so very low that whilst it’s really interesting, the results that we get, the people that tend to respond to surveys are those that are either very happy or very unhappy.

Paul: Yeah. And there’s no middle ground, does it?

Jo: Yeah. No. So I would really like it if as many people as possible filled it out, even if they just say, yeah, I haven’t had any wellbeing problems. I’m fine. Thanks. At least then I know that.

Paul: And that’s equally as important to know, isn’t it?

Jo: Exactly. Exactly. It is. Definitely.

Paul: So will the data that’s collected be used to support funding bids for pilot schemes or interventions, for example?

Jo: I haven’t, it’s interesting. I haven’t really thought yet about applying for funding, but I guess that is something that we could think about depending on what I get out of this first stage, the second stage.

As I say, is gonna involve more work with, interviewing people and analysis of interviews. So yeah, potentially. And it doesn’t even have to be FCN if other people have got ideas and they want to come in and collaborate with them on funding bids. Getting the money is always the challenging bit.

But there are, there is funding available. I have seen some funding available for wellbeing initiatives, especially if we use technology. It’s about thinking smarter and thinking about what else we can do. It isn’t at the moment, but I don’t think that will preclude us doing that in the future. Definitely.

Paul: So have you identified any differences in wellbeing outcomes or services used between digital forensics and more traditional disciplines?

Jo: At the moment it’s such early stages. I haven’t really had a chance. As I say, it only opened on Friday, so I haven’t had a chance to look at it.

My experiences from policing in England and Wales, probably not because police forces offer the same interventions to everybody in the organization. So I don’t think that there’s gonna be any huge differences. Not that I’ve seen yet, but I might be surprised. That’s why I want to do this. Because I don’t know.

Paul: Exactly. We just don’t know, do we?

Jo: I don’t know. No. So that will be a really interesting question and that’s why I’ve opened it to every forensic discipline. Because I want to see, are fingerprint examiners more likely to do one thing than DFIs are? Are CSIs more likely to do something?

Does the fact that they work shifts or anti-social hours affect what interventions they ask for? Does the fact that CSIs are more frontline mean that they’re more likely to do one particular thing than someone working in a forensic enhancement laboratory who’s based in a police station all the time?

I don’t know. I wanna see are there nuances, are there differences or does it not matter?

Paul: I think you’ll get some really interesting results when you start to compare the answers from the different disciplines. I think it’ll be really interesting to see.

Jo: Yeah. And one of the other things I’m really interested to look at is the differences between male and female. Are there differences in responses about that? Are the interventions that are chosen different depending on age group? Are the interventions that are chosen different depending on your time in the role?

So is someone that’s very new into the role, more likely or less likely, is someone a bit longer in the tooth like yourself or I, Paul, that we’ve been around a bit longer. Are we less likely than somebody who’s 20 and has been brought up with mental health being talked about all the time?

Mental health was not talked about when I joined policing in 1991.

Paul: No.

Jo: It was a get on with it, shut up and don’t moan. Go and get another job if you don’t like it sort of approach.

Paul: Pull your pants up and get on with it.

Jo: Yeah. If I’d have said, I’m struggling a little bit with that, they would’ve just said, go down the pub, or, you’ll be fine. So does that make a difference? I think it probably will, but I could be completely wrong.

Paul: I think you touched on a really interesting sort of comparison there between new investigators and old investigators, because obviously from a cultural perspective, the youngsters who are coming through now are far more educated and far more open to talking about their emotions and feelings as opposed to the dinosaurs. Who are you and me?

Is it, does that make a younger investigator less susceptible because they’re more open to talking about it than an older investigator who’s less likely to talk about it?

Jo: Yeah. One of the other things I’ve really thought about is there a sweet spot as well where if you’ve been in policing for a certain amount of time, so maybe is there, if you’ve been in two, three years, does that education you’ve had not matter anymore because it’s the policing culture that takes over that you feel like you can’t?

Do these people change? Do they, for the first year or so, maintain that? I can say what I feel. Does that change with time in policing? Are you more likely after a certain point to no longer think, oh, I can talk about it because my colleagues don’t, so maybe I shouldn’t or. Is that not true anymore? Has the culture of policing changed that everyone feels comfortable talking about it? That’s the kind of thing I want to get into.

Paul: I think time’s a really interesting factor in this because I’ve published a few studies now. In one of the studies I looked at, which wasn’t actually in digital forensics, it was in general policing, and it looked at the effect of it looked to see if cops suffered from anxiety and depression.

And one of the really interesting things I found in that study, I did moderation analysis to see if over time those reported symptoms reduce and I found by the time they’d served 15 years, the reported symptoms actually did begin to reduce. Which was really interesting.

Now, I wondered, I gave this some thought and I wondered, is it because they develop protective measures themselves, or is it the ones who are more resilient stay within the force and the less resilient leave?

Jo: Yeah.

Paul: Which would result in the same findings.

Jo: Which, that’s another whole area that I think resilience that we can look into is resilience inherent in our personalities that some people are just more resilient than others? Is it something that we build throughout our career? Is it something we can learn and that we can teach people?

Because resilience is something that you bring up all the time. You have to be resilient. How do you measure resilience? How do you build resilience? That’s how do you capture that?

Paul: Yeah. That’s a whole project in itself.

Jo: And I totally agree because it’s something that I’ve thought about. How do you become more resilient than the next person you’re sitting next to, because you’re both faced with the same material. But how does one stay longer than the other?

And I’ve hypothesized that maybe, and this is a hypothesis, it’s not tested, maybe individuals who live through ACEs, adverse childhood experiences, who become very resilient from a very early age. Maybe that continues in the adulthood and into these posts. And it increases that person’s resilience and ability to stay in the job longer and deal with the exposure that they do.

Paul: Or does that actually work in reverse?

Jo: Yeah, we don’t have, and is it something to do with personality? Because you could get two children that have been brought up in the same household where they’ve both experienced the same ACEs or very similar, where one will be very resilient and the other one struggles to cope with life after the ACEs.

And so you wonder, is part of it your experiences or part of it inherent personality? It’s fascinating. It really is fascinating. And there is some work on that. There is some research on that. Looking at adverse childhood experiences and resilience.

There is some research about that. So maybe that’s something we could look at to how we could use that to build it with our practitioners.

Paul: Yeah, I think that would be a really, that would throw up some really interesting results.

Jo: Definitely. Definitely.

Paul: Good. I know, Dr. Tehrani has done some research around adverse childhood experiences, but I think I’m only aware that she’s done one study about it, so I think it’s worthwhile doing more exploratory work around that.

Jo: Yeah, definitely. She did some work for us about the digital for the level four digital forensic technician apprenticeship. Because we were concerned that bringing 18 year olds into a DF environment looking at some of the images they’re gonna be looking at will affect their brain because they’re only 18.

Paul: It’s still developing at that age, isn’t it?

Jo: Exactly. So she did some work, some really good work for us on that to reassure us that we could bring 18 year olds into the workplace. So yeah there’s some really good research we could ask to get done or we could initiate. Definitely.

Paul: So before we have to cut this off what’s the closing date for the survey?

Jo: It’s the 4th of July. Easy date to remember. 4th of July. Any Americans who might wanna do it, the 4th of July is the last date. But if anyone misses the cutoff and they really wanna do it, they can drop me an email, my email’s on the survey, and I’m happy to extend it if need be.

Paul: Perfect. Jo, thank you very much for joining us today on the Forensic Focus podcast. We’ll get this out to the users of the platform and we’ll include a link directly to the research study. And if you wouldn’t mind coming back and reporting the results, we’d love to talk to you again.

Jo: Yeah. And I would love to do that as well. And at the end of the survey, if anyone wants to be involved in future research, the interviews I was talking about, they can put their email on there. No one, I won’t share that with anyone else. Their results, all their other results will stay anonymous. But I’ll get in touch with them for the latest stages of this research if they’d like to take this further.

Paul: And actually, you mentioned you would like some participants to be interviewed via teams?

Jo: That will be later in the year. So if I come back and report the results from this survey to your viewers, then I can then ask for volunteers. Anyone that will be interested in the next stage can contact me then.

But thank you for giving me this opportunity, Paul. Really a good opportunity for me to share the work we’re doing.

Paul: Oh, that’s great to catch up with you, Jo.

Jo: Yeah, you too.

Paul: Thanks. Bye for now.

Jo: Thank you. Bye-bye.