STEP Campaign: The Impact Of Trauma On Officers

Hampshire Police Federation Chair Spencer Wragg talks about ‘the normalisation’ of suicide in policing and how officers can ask for help

The STEP (Suicide Trauma Education Prevention) campaign, which aims to reduce the number of police officers who take their own lives, has started well, gaining support from across the country.
Part of the campaign is raising awareness of the amount of trauma officers face in their jobs, and encouraging them to seek help if they’re struggling.

Officers attend a high number of suicides. In 2023 alone, there were 7,055 suicides in the UK. Every single one of those had at least one police officer attend. The scenes themselves can be very traumatic, and officers often have to break the news of the death to family members. They see that raw emotion every time.

Officers see the different methods that people use to take their own lives, and feel the desperation that people have got to at that point. That becomes part of their everyday life. Not only will officers have to deal with the suicide, but very often they move on from that job straight to something else just as traumatic.

It gets to the point where suicide can almost become normalised and when officers find themselves in desperate circumstances, although they’ve seen the outcomes and impact of suicide it is almost as if it is logical. We deal with a variety of really traumatic, distressing incidents that normal members of the public will hopefully never experience in their lives. And we don’t just deal with it once; some officers will be dealing with this hundreds of times throughout their career.

An average member of the public will see maybe one or two traumatic incidents in their entire lifetime. But police officers may see 300 to 400 throughout their careers, and in a specialist areas such as roads policing or child protection, that could be in excess of 700 incidents.

That is on top of everything they’re dealing with in their normal lives. That is a lot of trauma for anyone to process, so there needs to be guidance, help and support for people to get through that.

Just as we have seen within the military and the public in general officers are also suffering from PTSD, whether this is from incidents attended, the amount of trauma they are exposed to or merely the constant pressures that policing provides.

This STEP campaign is needed because so many police officers are taking their own lives – between 2011 and 2022, there were 242 suicides of current police officers and PCSOs in England and Wales.

We need to look at the reasons for that, which are many and complex. But I believe a lot of it is down to the amount of trauma and pressure that officers are under, not only within the job but in their personal lives as well.

My concern is that, when officers are under pressure themselves, when times are desperate, whether that’s related to work or home, suicide is almost a normal behaviour that they’ve witnessed time and time again.

One of the main goals of this campaign is for police officers to attend a mandatory TRiM (Trauma Risk Management) session after they have been to a suicide-related incident, so that they can get support from the force.

The issue with policing is that we have to have a protective layer that stops us getting too emotionally involved in a lot of the really difficult incidents that we cover.

You put on a bit of a superhero mask.

When things affect you, the danger is that the mask never gets removed, and people don’t feel that they can reach out for help. But we are only human and it’s OK to show emotion.

TRiM is about supporting officers and helping them realise that it’s normal to be affected by what they have seen and what they’ve had to deal with. And for those officers who are struggling a little bit more, there is signposting to other agencies that can help them.

The next STEP in the campaign will be writing to MPs and arranging to meet with the National Police Chiefs’ Council to discuss these important issues.

It is important for officers who are struggling to know they are not alone, and that there are people there to help. This includes, for immediacy:

The Thin Blue Line: visit www.thinbluelineuk.org.uk

and Samaritans: call 116 123

There is also the support offered by charities such as Flint House, The Police Treatment Centres, The Ben Fund, Oscar Kilo, PTSD 999, Police Chaplaincy and Police Care.