Police officers' challenges raise mental health awareness

Former and serving Devon and Cornwall Police officers are taking part in endurance challenges to raise awareness about mental health issues.

Status Code 14, the radio request for an urgent call back, help or assistance, has been adopted as the name for the team.

Members are climbing, running, cycling, swimming and rowing through five endurance events over four years.

They are preparing to row the Atlantic Ocean in the third of the challenges.

Events completed so far include Steve Dredge, from Cornwall, doing a 75-mile (120km) run across Scotland, and four team members taking part in a London to Paris Triathlon relay.

The team is getting ready for the next challenge which will see them setting off from the Canary Isles in December 2022 and rowing 3,000 miles (4,800km) to Antigua.

Mr Dredge, who was diagnosed with PTSD in 2017, said he saw the project as "going on to be a platform to help other people, and for them to go and take on an endurance challenge to maybe get a little bit of themselves back [after health problems]".

The retired officer said that, after the row, the next challenge was "going out to Iceland... [for] a race called the Great Norse Run".

"That's 10 marathons in 10 days, running across Iceland.

"In the final event, we are going to climb Mont Blanc and paraglide from the summit."

Team member Sgt Simon Lemon, a serving officer who has sustained both mental and physical trauma on duty including being stabbed, said the challenges had to be "something big" to raise awareness.

He said: "When you raise awareness, you have to do something big and, if you're in pain, people love suffering."

They are raising money for a veterans' and emergency services mental health charity, as well as a men's cancers charity.

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