The amount of sick leave taken by North Somerset police officers for stress, anxiety or depression has more than doubled.

The numbers have risen from 381 days off between April 2013 and March 2014 to 868 days from April 2014 to March 2015.

This means stress leave accounted for more than a third of all sick leave last year, as the overall number of sick days taken between April 2014 and March 2015 stood at 2,441.

In 2013, officers took six days off for stress in the neighbourhood policing team, but in 2014 officers in the same unit took 147 days of stress-related sick leave. In the response team, figures for those periods rose from 146 days to 211.

An Avon and Somerset Constabulary spokesman said: “We remain committed to creating a working environment where the health and wellbeing of our officers and staff is a priority.

“We’re not able to identify a specific reason for the increase in stress levels as our systems don’t record whether any stress-related sickness absence is due to personal or work-related stress.

“One of our priorities has been to encourage staff to be more open about stress, depression and mental health issues in order to offer greater support and this may have led to an increased willingness to record these issues as a factor in sickness absence.”

The force has a number of schemes to support the mental health of its staff, including for officers and staff who have been involved in a traumatic incident.

It also now runs a scheme called Care First, which offers counselling to officers, staff and family members over the phone around the clock.

The spokesman added: “Following feedback from our staff survey, we have introduced further methods of staff engagement including blogs and web chats, where our staff can post questions.

“Alongside this, we work closely with the Police Federation, Unison and all of our staff support groups to engage with our workforce to continuously improve what we provide to meet the health and wellbeing needs of all our staff.”