ADHD and Policing: The Hidden Struggles of Neurodivergent Officers
Police, Burnout and ADHD: My Experience and Why I Left
It’s been two months since I handed my warrant card in and walked away from my career as a police officer — a job I genuinely loved, cared about, and poured so much of myself into: physically, mentally, and emotionally.
So why did I leave?
Like most things in life, there isn’t a one-word answer.
People imagine — and sometimes secretly hope for — a dramatic exit: a final straw, a meltdown, a complaint against me, a glorious confrontation.
But the truth is much quieter, much lonelier, and a little more human.
Leaving the police wasn’t one decision, it was a thousand small ones, each collecting micro-particles of dust over time, gathering into something big enough to finally make me sneeze. Loudly.
And rather than infect everyone around me with my pending germ-fest, I chose to sneak out of the back door with minimal fuss.
The Slow Burnout Eating Away At Me
I said goodbye to my closest colleagues. I answered curious questions from those who had heard the rumours without tiring myself out any more than I already was. Nine times out of ten, the response was the same:
“Good for you.”
“I’m jealous.”
“I wish I could, but I’m trapped by my pension.”
“Fair play — you’re brave.”
“I don’t blame you.”
“I might be right behind you if it carries on like this.”
And to be honest, none of this surprised me.
Research by Dr. Sarah Charman and Dr. Jemma Tyson at the University of Portsmouth found that voluntary resignations in policing rose by 72% in a single year — from 1,996 officers in 2021 to 3,433 in 2022.
Their work also reveals patterns familiar to every cop I know:
burnout, organisational dysfunction, lack of voice, and emotional exhaustion.
So when I left, I wasn’t unique.
I was part of a rapidly growing trend.
Handing in My Warrant Card (And Feeling… Nothing?)
The decision had crept up on me for twelve months.
So on that Friday in late September, I handed my warrant card to the ladies in admin, knowing my face and collar number would simply be destroyed and forgotten among thousands of other replaceable police officers.
And it didn’t bring up any big feelings.
In fact — aside from wondering whether I had completely dissociated by that point — I didn’t feel much of anything at all.
Maybe that was the cumulative effect of a long, hard year spent going round in circles.
Logistical circles, emotional circles, pros and cons.
You could call it many things: an anticlimax, a sad state of affairs, “just another shit cop leaving their colleagues to hold the thin blue line.”
It didn’t matter anymore. I was done.
Off I popped into civilian life once more.
And I know I’m not alone.
The Police Federation reports over 14,500 officers were signed off with mental-health-related sickness in the last year — the highest number ever recorded.
We’re burning out faster than we can recruit.
And we’re losing people long before they hand in their notice.
The Myth vs The Reality of Policing
People don’t understand policing unless they’ve lived it.
They see the uniform and the perceived power imbalance.
They see the headlines about the absolute fuckwits who should never have been sworn in to begin with.
What they don’t see is the emotional labour, the eroding sense of self, wearing away at officers’ cores for ten hours a day.
Followed by the same amount of time spent in fight-or-flight, waiting for the radio to go again, never knowing if today will be brain matter on tarmac, someone hanging from a loft hatch, a missing child, a neighbour dispute, a stolen jar of coffee.
People also don’t see the internal hypervigilance, which I’d argue is worse than the life-and-death stuff on the streets.
The constant threat that shit will always roll downhill:
Will they change the shift pattern again?
Will one of our colleagues be arrested today?
Will we miss bedtime with our kids because half the station is off sick with deteriorating mental health?
And when I say deteriorating mental health — I truly mean it.
Recent research found police officers experience significantly higher rates of mental-health-related sickness than other public-sector workers.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11094650/
And between 2021 and 2024, the Police Federation identified 56 police officer suicides - despite two of the UK’s largest forces unable to provide any data.
These aren’t “one-off tragedies.”
They’re symptoms of an overstretched, overloaded, emotionally battered system.
A Walking Contradiction - Me, Policing and ADHD.
For me — a late-diagnosed neurodivergent woman who didn’t yet understand the nuances of my own brain — policing was both the perfect fit and the perfect storm.
I thrived in chaos. Yet whilst my peak performance often came in the midst of dealing with the very worst (and sometimes, very best) of mankind, I also really craved silence. Managing a lot of noisy stress in a dynamic situation was where I thrived, yet I could almost hear my cortisol levels rising, a constant humming - real or imagined, I don’t quite know.
What I was sure of - that this was making me unwell. My hair was falling out, I was waking up with a HIIT-level heart rate, and I couldn’t face any form of socialising beyond being at home with my boyfriend and son.
The thing with ADHD is: crisis makes sense, and problem-solving comes naturally - if there’s an imminent deadline, threat or risk of harm. Which there pretty much always is in policing.
Reading a room, a person, or assessing a situation is an instinct. ADHD helps you pick out the essential information and cut out unnecessary noise. You can almost smell a lie. You can adapt your communication like a chameleon, to meet the person in front of you where they’re at - angry, terrified, intoxicated, traumatised.
I can’t explain it beyond my own experience, but what I do know is this is a positive, useful skill for officers who are faced with every different kind of communication style on the planet (and often in the space of one shift). And it should be treated as such.
What I came to struggle with the most was the internal politics and the feeling of being in an abusive relationship with a giant beast.
The injustice happening all around my team and the wider force - in an institution built on “justice”. The endless paperwork, the emotional residue, the feeling that men in suits were putting plasters over gaping wounds rather than addressing root causes (which could easily have been done if they had sat down with the boots on the ground and simply asked “what can we do to fix this?”).
The cracks were everywhere, and I asked myself every day if it was worth the fight. Is this my fight? Can I remain in a job which pays me less after 5 years of service than my 18 year old child earns on a building site? Can I come to work and hear that another colleague is in suicidal crisis, knowing it may only take one bad job to put me or one of my team on a direct flight to that place too? Was this fair on my family?
There are multiple reasons officers resign, but I will bet my last penny that the majority have asked themselves similar questions, and battled with their head and their heart for a long time before they made their decision to hand their warrant card in.
Further Reading
Working in policing places people in environments where emotional regulation is constantly tested. High-pressure incidents, shift work, and exposure to trauma can amplify the emotional intensity many people with ADHD already experience. I explore this in more depth in my article on ADHD emotional intensity in women, where I explain why emotional overwhelm is often misunderstood as weakness when it is actually a neurological response to stress.
Many neurodivergent professionals in policing become experts at masking their ADHD traits in order to fit into a rigid and highly structured culture. Over time this can lead to exhaustion and burnout. I talk more about this pattern in my article on ADHD masking in women and why so many capable women spend years working twice as hard to appear organised, calm, and “together.”
Support for ADHD in the workplace is improving slowly, but many professionals still don’t realise that practical help exists. In the UK, schemes such as Access to Work can fund coaching and workplace adjustments for neurodivergent employees whose symptoms affect their job. For officers and staff navigating demanding careers, this type of support can be transformational.
Public understanding of ADHD in professions like policing is also shaped by media narratives. Stories often focus on extreme cases or oversimplified explanations, which can reinforce stigma around neurodivergence in the workplace. I explore this more fully in my article on ADHD in the media and why these narratives can make it harder for professionals to talk openly about their experiences.
Come back here soon for the Part 2
