A clinical psychologist has ranked the Ghana Police Service as the institution with the highest stress rate in the country, and warned of dire consequences on its personnel if nothing is done about it.

A Police officer himself, Supt. Bismark Agyepong, said the lifestyle and welfare of police personnel must be taken seriously to prevent them from developing stressful behaviours and conditions.

Supt Agyepong, who is the Commander of Mampong Police, said this on 3FM while commenting on the issue of the police lance corporal who committed suicide after shooting dead his two kids and in-law in Tema on Monday evening.

“I can say not from any research findings that it [the Police] is the number one institution where stress is so much that if we don’t find a way of supporting our boys and our personnel then some of these things could actually happen,” he claimed.

According to him “this is a person who isn’t in the right frame of mind and has been given access to a weapon so therefore, the thought of him finishing what he actually intended doing becomes easier”.

Stress, according to the Canadian Centre of Science and Education, has the propensity to disrupt the behaviour of employees in an organization, noting it has been found to affect organizational performance and efficiency.

Supt Agyepong said employers always draw a line between people’s personal lives and their jobs which he described as “very unfortunate” because the employers don’t have the slightest idea of what their personnel may be going through at a particular time.

“All we are looking for is job performance but as a human being, everything that happens to you be it in the office or out of the office, in the house or out of the house, always comes back to this same person,” he said.