Prison staff are increasingly missing work due to poor mental health.

13:17, Tue, Dec 2, 2025 Updated: 13:17, Tue, Dec 2, 2025

UK - London - HMP Wandsworth Prison

England's prisons lost nearly 150,000 working days due to mental ill-health last year (Image: Getty)

Prison staff in England are going through a major mental health crisis, according to new data. Some officers have reported "working on emore minute in the prison" was "mentally impossible" due to lack of support, regular traumatic incidents and violence. Data obtained through Freedom of Information (FOI) request by the BBC from HM Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS) reveal that England's prisons lost almost 150,000 working days because of mental ill-health last year, up 44% since 2019. Additionally, ten prisons in England had more than 25% of prison officers taking at least a day off due to poor mental health. 

HMP Guys Marsh near Shaftesbury, Dorset, topped the list, with 43.8% of officers taking a mental health break in 2024.

Sophie, 22, was a prison officer at Guys Marsh until last month.

She told the BBC: "Dealing with constant and disgusting levels of self-harm and assaults with no real support meant I just couldn't do it anymore. I begged for help but got nothing."

HMP Guys Marsh

HMP Guys Marsh (Image: Getty)

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According to Steve Robertson, Guys Marsh's deputy governor from 2017 to 2020, while working in the prison service since 1990, he had "never" felt any challenges to his mental health. That "absolutely changed" when he began working at Guys Marsh, from where he eventually medically retired on mental health grounds. 

When his retirement came, he felt he received "zero recognition" for more than three decades of "blood, sweat and tears" to improve the prison.

He said: "I thought I might get a clock or even just a cake with some colleagues, but the debriefing meeting lasted seven minutes and I got nothing.

"I was already in a dark place, but I'm not too proud to say that I could not stop crying in the meeting."

Earlier this year, HM Inspectorate of Prisons found that illegal drugs have become more widely available at Guys Marsh, a violent prison with a "poor culture" that has deteriorated since inspectors raised concerns three years ago. The report also highlighted high rates of staff absence.

Since Mr Robertson left the prison in 2020, the percentage of its total staff taking at least one mental health sickness day a year doubled from 15% to 34% last year. And, serious assaults on prison staff in England and Wales have surpassed pre-pandemic levels, rising from 871 in 2019 to 974 in 2024, according to HMPPS. 

The most common category of sickness, HMPPS reports, was mental ill health, corresponding to 41.2% of all sick days in the past year.