The ‘thin blue line is now thinner’-why we must address police mental health urgently to stop the increase in police suicides.

Yesterday was another sad day in the world of policing. Suicide amongst police officers is now at a very poignant level, something that is very frightening. There are now more police officers losing their life to suicide, than those killed on duty. Risk factors for officers are high, with the urgent need to address them, often left behind.

Many have been calling for a national mental health strategy for all members of the emergency services to be introduced and implemented across the country to help forces address this problem. Still, to this day, supporting officer’s mental health is nowhere near what it ought to be.

Officers deal daily with first hand trauma and witness this trauma most days. ‘The immediate and long term impacts of suicide are arguably exacerbated given the depressive ‘ripple’ effect that may eventuate as a product of witnessing first hand trauma’ (Barron2010).

The Office of National Statistics revealed that 169 officers have lost their life between 2011 and 2019. That is an average of 21 deaths per year. A truly shocking number.

Yesterday, heartbreakingly, that number increased here in London and the sad reality that our police officers are human after all comes to light.

Shockingly, society chooses daily to forget that behind that uniform is a person, a person with problems that still chooses to go out everyday and help others.

It has always been considered to be ‘part of the job’ to attend endless calls that most of the community would find disturbing, yet police officers are expected to deal with those as that’s what they signed up for. Yet, today, the pressure these officers are put under are enormous and completely incomprehensible. The majority are people who joined to as they say to make a difference, because they wanted to help the community and be there at the hardest times to support others. But has this now gone too far?

It has become so easy to criticise police officers, especially by those who realistically do not know the first thing about policing, will never know, will never understand and who would on a high probability, ‘bottle it’ if told to do an officer’s job for a day. Why is it that it is their voices are always the loudest?

We know that 1 in 5 officers suffer with PTSD and more suffer now with Complex PTSD. Many are unaware of what they are suffering and still go to work and continue their duties, despite not feeling themselves. Many start to break and realise that something is wrong and must urgently look for help and sadly some do not.

We know that police officers do not only their role, but many others in the community after years of austerity that have cut back so many vital services in our community. The cuts has also seen the police numbers reduced and the work rate increase. The trial by social media is now expected.

The pressures these officers are under is quite simply unrealistic. The list of reasons why they undergo these pressures is long. Policing has become a political football with officers the daily losers on all fronts.

In the words of an officer, ‘yesterday the thin blue line got thinner,’.

RIP.

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