Officer who came close to suicide bravely tells her story

PC Hannah Briggs says her hope is the campaign will provide police managers with better awareness around what to say or where to direct people when they are at their lowest and need help.

“We could prevent more suicides,” said PC Briggs.

Before joining the police six years ago, PC Briggs worked with young people who were vulnerable to sexual and criminal exploitation. Tragically, a teenage girl that she worked with and knew very well went missing and was later found brutally murdered.

By this time PC Briggs was a trainee officer and – despite knowing the girl – was still sent to secure the crime scene.

She recalled: “I was sent to the scene of her murder… only a few people knew about my link to the girl. I could smell her decomposing body, and it had been burnt. That was traumatic. But I put on a brave face and did my duty until one of the sergeants who was aware of my knowledge of her, moved me to a different scene placement.”

When PC Briggs returned home she could not stop crying, and took the next day off work. She was told she did not qualify for TRiM (Trauma Risk Management) as the situation was more about stress management and resilience.

PC Briggs said: “I went back to work, I carried on going to deaths and suicides, but I became sort of numb. In September, I was placed on the CID attachment, and by October I had a breakdown.”

She was referred to Occupational Health and signed off work by her GP. But she felt she had to return to her job because she had a young child she needed to provide for and she was still on probation.

Her new sergeant noticed something was wrong and told PC Briggs she was like “a zombie”. She said: “I was. I was just going to job after job, I was always on edge, I was always looking for the exit. I wasn’t sleeping at night, I was having flashbacks, I was binge eating.”

When a role on the child abuse team came up, PC Briggs went for it and did well for a while, until her sleeping and binge eating got worse again. By now she had got in touch with the charity Police Care UK.

She said: “They were incredible, I can’t fault them. Through them I managed to access EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing) therapy.”

But eventually even this did not help, and PC Briggs started to consider suicide. She recalled: “When I think about it now, the idea of leaving my family terrifies me because I’m now of sound mind. But when I was there in that mindset it felt like it was the right thing to do, I felt like I was a constant misery for everyone. A tiny part of my head was fighting so hard for me to survive and I’m so glad I didn’t go through with it. I truly believe that unless you’ve had a mental health issue, you can’t understand the pain people are in.”

Four years after she started suffering from trauma, PC Briggs was signed off work again and was supported by Hampshire Police Federation and her Child Abuse Investigations inspector. She eventually left the child abuse team and joined the multi-agency safeguarding hub.

She said: “My inspector now is also incredible, she’s so supportive.”

She praised colleagues Inspector Matt Cummings and Inspector Ali Attwood.

PC Briggs continued: “When Spencer Wragg – chair of Hampshire Police Federation – announced the STEP campaign, I just thought, ‘finally’. If police managers had better awareness around mental health first aid and they knew what to say or where to direct people, we could prevent more suicides.

“We need more support and debriefs, to be asked: ‘How are you really feeling?’ so we can cry or scream or decompress, rather than just being told to go onto the next job, deal with it, be resilient.

“I love being a police officer, I’m so proud, I work so hard. But I want to speak up about this. I want all the people out there to realise that we deal with so much, but we have feelings, and it affects us and it affects our families.”

From 2011 to 2022, there were 242 suicides of police officers and PCSOs. From 2021 to 2024 an estimated 80 former/current officers took their own lives.

The STEP campaign is calling on forces to introduce mandatory trim referrals following a police officer or staff attending a suicide, wants forces to add the ‘Stay Alive’ app to force mobile devices, wants forces to better collect data on police officer and staff suicide/attempted suicide so we can better measure the extent of the issue and wants to encourage colleagues to talk about the taboo subject and not be concerned about that.

The campaign says 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).

Officers can also access the support offered by charities and organisations including Flint House, Police Treatment Centres, The Ben Fund, Oscar Kilo, and the ‘Stay Alive’ app from Grassroots Suicide Prevention.