Why Are Police Suicide Rates in New Zealand So Low? A Closer Look at the Data Gap

In 2020, New Zealand police suicide rates were reported at just 5%—a figure that appears reassuring at first glance. But in comparison to 12.5% in Australia and 15.4% in England and Wales during the same period (Beckley et al., 2025), the number raises deeper concerns. Are New Zealand officers truly at lower risk? Or is our system failing to measure—and therefore respond to—the full impact of psychological injury among those who serve?

At the Blue Hope Foundation, we advocate for early intervention, system reform, and transparent reporting around mental injury and suicide within the police service. From our position supporting those most at risk, we believe the reported suicide rate in New Zealand is not a success story—it’s a statistical blind spot. The causes are structural, cultural, and correctable.

1. Coronial Delay and Misclassification

In New Zealand, the process of confirming a suicide involves complex legal and evidential thresholds. Deaths with ambiguous circumstances—such as single-vehicle accidents, medication overdoses, or firearm injuries—may be classified as “accidental” or “undetermined” if the intent cannot be clearly proven.

These cases often remain unresolved for years due to coronial backlog, and even once complete, they may never be recoded to reflect suicide. This contributes to a systemic undercount of service-related deaths and makes trend analysis nearly impossible.

As highlighted in the international literature, misclassification of suicide is a known barrier to effective prevention efforts (Martinmaki et al., 2023; WHO, 2024). Without accurate data, it becomes difficult for policymakers to allocate resources or assess the true scale of mental distress among police workers.

2. Cultural Stigma and Institutional Reluctance

While mental health awareness has improved in recent years, stigma remains deeply embedded in many policing cultures, including here in New Zealand. Officers report fear of being labelled weak, untrustworthy, or unsuitable for promotion if they disclose psychological distress (Ricciardelli & Johnston, 2022; Drew & Martin, 2021).

This stigma not only suppresses help-seeking behaviours but also leads to organisational reluctance to formally acknowledge suicide when it occurs. Senior leaders often hesitate to link suicide with duty-related trauma, fearing liability or reputational damage. The result is a pattern of silent losses that are not reflected in official reporting or internal reviews.

3. No National Suicide Register for Police

Unlike Australia and the UK, New Zealand lacks a centralised, transparent register tracking suicide among serving and former police officers. This means that once an officer resigns, retires, or is medically discharged, their subsequent well-being—and possible suicide—is no longer recorded as a police-related event.

This absence is in breach of the spirit of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), particularly Article 31, which requires states to collect disaggregated data on persons with disabilities to inform inclusive policy. PTSD, moral injury, and other psychological injuries sustained in police work must be addressed.

4. Resignation and Quiet Exits

One of the most overlooked issues in police suicide prevention is the quiet resignation. Officers living with mental injury are often encouraged to leave before their condition escalates to a formal diagnosis or medical retirement. These individuals often exit without a full understanding of their ACC entitlements, without legal support, and without access to continued care.

Once they leave, they are no longer considered “police”—but their trauma doesn’t leave with them. As research shows, this transition can be a period of profound identity loss, social isolation, and increased suicide risk (Venville et al., 2024).

The Blue Hope Foundation has seen too many cases where former officers have died by suicide within months or years of leaving the service—never acknowledged in police records, never publicly counted.

5. System Failure, Not System Success

In a 2018 national survey of Australian police officers, 47.4% said they did not receive adequate help for mental or emotional problems from their employer (Lawrence et al., 2018). While no comparable survey exists for New Zealand, our lived experience suggests similar, if not worse, outcomes for those seeking psychological care through employer-led pathways.

What New Zealand’s suicide data currently reflects is not fewer deaths, but fewer acknowledgements. The consequence is a lack of urgency, inadequate funding, and the continued use of outdated wellbeing frameworks that fail to protect those at risk.

6. What Needs to Change

If we are serious about preventing suicide in the police service, we must start by correcting how we count and acknowledge the dead. The Blue Hope Foundation calls for:

• A national suicide register covering both serving and former police officers.

• Reform of coronial classification processes and faster completion of suicide determinations.

• Post-service monitoring and care, particularly for those with PTSD or related injuries.

• Routine, anonymous suicide surveillance reporting in police wellness data.

• Full compliance with CRPD Article 31, ensuring data drives reform.

Until these steps are taken, New Zealand’s low police suicide rate is a false reassurance—a number that masks harm, delays intervention, and denies justice to the families left behind.

References

Beckley, A., Wang, J., Birch, P., & den Heyer, G. (2025). Mental health and well-being amongst police officers: A three-country comparison through the application of the job demands-resources model. Journal of Forensic Practice, 22(2). https://doi.org/10.1108/JFP-02-2025-0013

Drew, J.M., & Martin, S. (2021). A national study of police mental health in the USA: Stigma, mental health and help-seeking behaviours. Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology, 36(2), 295–306.

Lawrence, D. et al. (2018). Answering the Call: National Survey of the Mental Health and Wellbeing of Police and Emergency Services. University of Western Australia.

Martinmaki, S.E., van der Aa, N., Nijdam, M.J., Pommee, M., & ter Heide, F.J.J. (2023). Treatment response predictors for a multidisciplinary PTSD clinic for police officers. Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy, 15(2), 349–358.

Ricciardelli, R., & Johnston, M.S. (2022). Police mental health and wellness. In H. Pontell (Ed.), Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Criminology and Criminal Justice. Oxford University Press.

Townsend, C. (2023). Vernon Herron: My goal in life is to eliminate the suicides in this department and nationally. Policing Insight. https://policinginsight.com

Venville, A., Kostecki, T., McGowan, D., & Lynch, R. (2024). From active police duty to civilian life: The role of peer support. The Police Journal: Theory, Practice and Principles, 97(1), 92–104. https://doi.org/10.1177/0032258X231212158

World Health Organization. (2024). Post-traumatic stress disorder: Key facts. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/post-traumatic-stress-disorder