THE FAMILY of a much-loved police officer who was found dead earlier this year are urging others who feel helpless to seek support.

PC Mick Atkinson was a dog handler with North Yorkshire Police and had served with the force for 17-years before his death in October, aged 37.

 

In a heartfelt plea, his partner Kellie Taylor said that people who feel desperate should never think they were a burden.

“However hopeless you’re feeling and however much you feel that your family would be better off without you, it’s absolutely not the case,” she said.

 

The couple’s daughter, Elizabeth, is now eight months old, and Ms Taylor said PC Atkinson treated her two sons, Max, 12, and Harry, eight, like his own.

Before his death, he had been off work due to knee problems for 18-months and had undergone two operations.

His dogs Max and Brody were reassigned while he was on medical leave, which the family found “distressing”.

Ms Taylor described PC Atkinson as somebody who was “always smiling, always laughing and loved being around people”.

However he had become frustrated because he did not know whether he would be able to return to frontline duty, and had spoken to his GP and occupational health staff.

Ms Taylor said: “He was told he was suffering with anxiety because of the situation. He was never diagnosed with depression.

“Whether he was suffering with that and we were unaware, no-one will know.

“He was doing everything he could. He was waiting to find out whether he would be medically retired or if he would be retained working in an office, which was the thing that upset him the most.”

 

Ms Taylor said the couple spent a pleasant day together before he was due to start a phased return to work, but hours later he was found dead.

Ms Taylor said she could not describe how hard life was without him, but thanked her support network.

She said: “Mick spent his whole life looking after everybody else around him, and if I ever said to him I was worried about him, he said he didn’t want that because it was his job to look after everybody else.

“I wish he’d have been in a place where he could have understood that the pleasure he got from looking after everybody else, we would have got that pleasure from looking after him, but he didn’t feel that way.

“If Mick could see now the devastation he’s left behind, and if he’d been in a place to understand that, he would not have made that choice, because if you talk and if you let other people help you it’s only then you can really see into the future, see the impact.”