Reflection · 17 September 2026
A month of saying difficult things out loud
No one in the emergency services should be left to carry this alone. Making that real takes people in a lot of different places.
News and reflections
What we are writing.
Short pieces on the job, the gaps in support, and what helps. Newest first.
Looking for where to find us in person? See our events.
Reflection · 16 September 2026
What happens after the job
Post-incident support is the gap where a lot of harm is either prevented or set in motion.
Reflection · 15 September 2026
The days that are not marked
Awareness days interrupt the silence for a day. The work is what we do on all the days that are not marked.
Reflection · 10 September 2026
Changing the narrative on suicide
On World Suicide Prevention Day, the theme was changing the narrative. For the emergency services, the narrative has been silence.
Reflection · 9 September 2026
Emergency Services Day
Two minutes of silence for those killed in the course of their duties. Alongside it, the losses that appear on no memorial.
Reflection · 8 September 2026
Two days that belong together
Emergency Services Day and World Suicide Prevention Day fall in the same week. Recognising what the job costs, and refusing to let part of that cost stay unspoken, are the same act of respect.
Reflection · 4 September 2026
When the process becomes the punishment
Police Federation data shows 12 of the 13 police officer suicides known to it in 2025 involved officers under investigation. Welfare during investigations needs to change.
Reflection · 3 September 2026
Off the welfare margins, onto the operational table
Suicide prevention is a human matter first. But while it sits only in the welfare column, it stays optional.
News · 2 September 2026
Training built for this job
Most mental health training was written for everyone, which means it was written for no one in particular. We are developing something built for frontline emergency work.
Reflection · 1 September 2026
"We do not have a problem here"
The most common response this work meets, and the most dangerous. Usually it means no one has looked.
Reflection · 27 August 2026
The words we use
Language decides whether people speak or stay quiet. Not softer words. Truer ones.
Reflection · 26 August 2026
What peer support actually is
Every service says it wants peer support. Fewer can say what it is, or what it takes to hold it up.
Reflection · 25 August 2026
Why we are called Silence Between Sirens
The sirens are the part everyone sees. The harm settles in the silence between them.
Campaign · 20 August 2026
Where does someone turn, early?
A question for anyone who works in or around the emergency services, and an invitation to tell us the honest answer.
Reflection · 19 August 2026
Support, before breaking point
Four words, and the whole idea sits in one of them. You do not have to earn help by falling apart first.
Reflection · 13 August 2026
When someone says they are not doing great
What happens in the next two minutes matters more than any policy. You are not there to fix it.
Reflection · 12 August 2026
Resilience is not the answer on its own
Prevention that relies only on individuals being strong enough will always leave people behind.
Reflection · 11 August 2026
"They seemed fine"
The sentence that comes up again and again, and it is usually true. That is the problem, not the reassurance it sounds like.
Reflection · 6 August 2026
The hardest part is the first sentence
Not the crisis. The ordinary moment before it, where someone could say "I am not doing great" and does not.
Reflection · 5 August 2026
Support is a sequence, not a phone number
Good support notices early, is easy to reach, is trusted, and does not stop at signposting. Most services have pieces of it.
Reflection · 4 August 2026
Built by people who have been there
We are not studying this problem from the outside. Lived experience is the check on what actually helps.
Reflection · 30 July 2026
Community, Care and Change
There is no single fix, because there is no single cause. The three areas the work sits in, and why they hold together.
Reflection · 29 July 2026
The crisis is not where the risk starts
By the time someone reaches what looks like a crisis, the risk has usually been building a long time. That changes where support has to be.
News · 29 July 2026
Three officers, and the gap in the data
Three retired police officers spoke to the BBC about the trauma they carried through their careers. What they described is not unique to policing.
Milestone · 28 July 2026
Why Silence Between Sirens exists
Our first post. A suicide prevention cause for emergency services personnel, built by people who have lived the thing it exists to change.
News · 27 July 2026
Why picking up the phone is the harder option
Samaritans is one of the services we point people to every day. For emergency services personnel, calling can feel like the harder option, not the easier one.
Reflection · 25 July 2026
No one is required to count
Ask how many emergency services personnel died by suicide last year, and no one can give you a reliable answer. Not because the number is small.
You do not have to be at breaking point to reach out.
Silence Between Sirens is not a crisis service. These lines are free and there for you now.