A coroner has begun looking at whether the NSW Police Force needs to change the way it deals with struggling police officers, in light of the suicide of a detective sergeant.

Ashley Bryant took his life in the Nightcap National Park near Byron Bay in 2013, about a year after he was medically discharged from the police.

Today at the inquest, State Coroner Michael Barnes was told Bryant was “a very capable and accomplished police officer” during his 24 years in the job.

But Counsel Assisting Ian Bourke SC said “Mr Bryant was exposed to a number of traumatic incidents in the course of his police work…road fatalities…drownings, suicides, rapes and murders.”

“There is clear evidence Ashley was struggling from the effects of PTSD, depression and alcohol abuse,” he said.

Before he fell to his death at Minyon Falls, Bryant called triple zero and told the operator “I understand that this is being recorded and I suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. I can no longer live with the trauma of it and I want this to go to the coroner.”

“There needs to be more done, more things put in place for what happens.

“Listen, for partners, of those that suffer, because I suffer and so do the partners. And there has to be more done for them all right, I have no more to say.”

Police were dispatched immediately and found his body at the base of a cliff.

Mr Bourke told the court the coroner should look at recommendations around how police officers are screened, and whether there should be changes to way they are supported and treated.

A lawyer representing Bryant’s widow Deborah told the court: “Failures in the system in 2006 eventuated in his death in 2013…”

Fourteen people including Assistant Commissioner Carlene York are expected to give evidence over the next fortnight.