Mental health of a police force: estimating prevalence of work-related depression in Australia without a direct national measure.

The risk of work-related depression in Australia was estimated based on a survey of 631 police officers. Psychological wellbeing and psychological distress items were mapped onto a measure of depression to identify optimal cutoff points. Based on a sample of police officers, Australian workers, in general, are at risk of depression when general psychological wellbeing is considerably compromised. Large-scale estimation of work-related depression in the broader population of employed persons in Australia is reasonable. The relatively high prevalence of depression among police officers emphasizes the need to examine prevalence rates of depression among Australian employees.