Spencer Wragg, founder of the STEP (Suicide Trauma Education Prevention) campaign, talks about the difference a year makes.

24 March 2026

Spencer Wragg, founder of the STEP (Suicide Trauma Education Prevention) campaign, talks about the difference a year makes.

Q: What are your thoughts when you look back on one year of the STEP campaign?

A: We’ve achieved so much since last March, but we need to acknowledge that suicides have continued to happen. There's been some amazing work and we've spread the suicide-prevention message far and wide, we are trying to help as many people as possible, but the reality is that suicide is continuing. Sadly, only a few weeks ago, we lost someone else within policing. We know there is still a lot more work to do going forward.

Q: What have been the biggest successes over the past year?

A: When you look from the amount of progress that we've made in highlighting suicide within policing over the past 12 months, I think it's been incredible. We've linked up with the Grassroots Suicide Prevention charity and its Stay Alive app, which we’ve succeeded in getting on around 50,000 officers’ phones. We’ve talked about STEP in Parliament, it’s been recognised by the national Police Federation, recognised by Unison, recognised by the National Police Chiefs’ Council. A lot has happened to move the conversation forward and help protect officers in a relatively short period of time.

Q: How else are you spreading the word?

A: We're also in contact with Professor John Harrison, the National Police Chief Medical Officer based within Oscar Kilo. It’s all about coordination with other groups, because STEP is not the only platform that's talking about suicide. And it’s not the panacea for solving suicide – we won't prevent every suicide, but if we can get people to recognise there's a problem, and then be willing to come forward and talk about it, that's a huge step forward for policing.

Q: What are the continuing frustrations about the way suicide is viewed in policing?

A: The sad fact is that I still can't tell you exactly how many people took their own life last year within policing, because there's still no mandate on forces to record it. We can give it our best guess, we can speak to individual forces, but as an organisation we don't know how big the problem actually is at the moment. And of course we don’t know the number of people who have considered suicide, or attempted it, or who are thinking about it right now. We know that one in four people in society will have suicidal thoughts over their lifetime, and that is based on normal members of the public who don't deal with some of the horrific things that we have to deal with in policing.

Q: How are you helping push the mandate for suicide reporting?

A: We have seen some progress – we've seen it being talked about at inquests, we've seen it being talked about in the House of Lords, and I spoke about it at the national Police Federation Conference. But what we need is some action; we need Chief Constables to step forward and take the lead on this. Rather than waiting for a mandate from the Home Office, they need to be proactive and start recording suicides.

Q: What other challenges have you faced in this campaign?

A: Seeing officers having the courage to share their stories, and we've had contact from people all over the country about this issue. There is some amazing work going on in lots of different forces, but I think we could be more coordinated. The Home Office and the National Police Chiefs’ Council should be coordinating this – that would help us move on faster and get further in tackling it. We seem to be a step behind other industries and services in recognising, first of all, that suicide is a problem, and then actually doing something about it. We need to be doing more on the preventative side.

Q: Some have said that suicide in policing is no worse than any other industry, such as the construction industry. What’s your response to that?

A: Suicide doesn't care about your profession or religion or beliefs, or where you live or what rank you are. We know that for sure.  All of us come to work with life stresses, such as mortgages to pay, and children, and relationship issues. But we need to recognise that police officers attend an inordinate amount of traumatic incidents. And there is also clearly a link between misconduct investigations and suicide, and that has got to be looked at. Officers and staff feel very isolated when they are under investigation. Of course there will be investigations when people are suspected of breaching standards of professional behaviour, or even committed criminal acts. But I do think they need to be handled more compassionately, they need to be handled more quickly, and we need to support those individuals who are at higher risk of suicide.

Q: How have you reached so many people?

A: The team at Martis Media have been a brilliant support with their unrivalled contacts in the industry and their experience of running successful campaigns such as Harper’s Law and helped me spread the message to all parts of the country; we’ve even been invited to present to European police trade unions – EuroCOP - next month, so we’re spreading that message further. We’ve had contact from Australia, from the USA. A lot of those doors would never have been opened had it not been for the exposure that we've got through working with the team at Martis Media and in particular Royston and Celeste. As a local chair of a single Federation branch, there is no way that this would have gone as far as it has without that support and expertise.

Q: What’s next for the STEP campaign?

A: We want to get the Stay Alive app onto all police officers’ phones in the UK. I don’t understand why some forces are resisting it, when it is free and tested. We're branching out into introducing our European colleagues to STEP, and we're looking at moving this towards all UK emergency services. We know our colleagues in fire and ambulance services attend the same traumatic incidents that we do. We don't want to lose any more people. There will be people who are in crisis over the next 12 months, we know that, that's inevitable. But we need, as an organisation, to do more to support people during their toughest times.