CALM's Simon Gunning On Entering a More Hopeful Era For Suicide Prevention

One in 13 people attempt suicide. One in four people have suicidal thoughts. 

Both are staggering stats — but very real reflections of today, even though, according to the World Health Organisation, suicide is the most preventable cause of death.

Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM) is now widely recognised as the foremost charity battling suicide prevention as it raises awareness of the topic in ever-memorable ways.

Simon Gunning, CALM’s CEO, describes the statistics as its “holy shit numbers”. They were originally the root of getting audiences to listen and acknowledge the topic once deemed a taboo; the charity, however, is now entering a new era - a more hopeful one. 

“The next work that you'll see coming out of us by the end of the year and in 2027 is all about hope,” he explains. “It's all about survival when we know the numbers are so terrifying. Piling more horror onto that — I don't think that’s the way for us to progress.” 

Talking taboo

Gunning’s career is one that’s taken “a million different handbrake turns”, which has seen him work in the record business, in TV, and in advertising. His stint at CALM, despite lasting nearly a decade, was only meant to be a month. 

“CALM’s chair James Scroggs rang me — his wife was in my team at the BBC, and it had just parted company with the founding CEO,” he outlines. “I met him and he said, 'Well, come and do a month and have a look at it’, when it was teeny tiny. There were eight employees, less than £1m in revenue, and nobody had really heard of it. But there was something quite amazing about the strange positioning of what could be a potentially interesting brand in an area that was still very taboo. 

“Then I stayed for another month. Then another month. And then it was 10 years.”

Gunning is full of contagious energy, despite talking about such a devastating topic; it’s clear to see why his indefinite month is still going. 

When he joined in 2017, the topic of mental health, Gunning admits, is something he felt “really awkward” about. 

“It's 2017. It wasn't long ago at all, and now we've gone to a degree past that. We still have, as a nation, a real problem with suicide prevention because we fail to understand that suicide is horrible, but suicide prevention is brilliant.”

He explains its work leans into the fact that “we can all be suicide preventers”. 

“What stops people preventing suicide is a lack of knowledge, a lack of confidence, a belief that others will do it. And the truth is, other people don’t.”

Gunning describes the fine line of responsibility when it comes to communicating about the topic of suicide, making CALM’s quest for education all the more important. 

“The Papageno Effect says that hope and survival is as contagious as despair, whereas the Werther Effect means despair is contagious,” he outlines. “If you report on suicide method, if somebody identifies either psychographically or demographically, they can get ideas. Copycat is a real thing. 

“We lean on the hope. The purest, the cleanest, and the most optimistic thing to say that it's a part of life, it will pass, and there’s an overwhelming likelihood that you're going to survive and be okay.”

The charity is one that has a growing reputation for work that causes shock and stops audiences in their tracks, and Gunning is quick to praise its creative agency of record, adam&eve\TBWA.

“James Murphy [adam&eve’s co-founder] introduced me to these whippersnappers Ant Nelson, Mike Sutherland, and Will Grundy who just stuck with us,” he explains. “The first campaign that we did with Ant, Mike, and Will we managed to get half pages on the backs of the Sunday papers for a campaign called Notes, which was where we printed real suicide notes but from people that had survived. They’re brilliant to work with.”

Despite being known for its visually impactful campaigns, Gunning notes that CALM is always looking for new, different ways to progress its goals. 

“I was given a task by my board at the start of 2025: when you get to 10 years, what are you going to do? What's different?"

He continues: “I looked at two issues in homophobia and racism — things have gotten a bit better but so far from being cured. Was it the 1976 Race Relations Act that helped racism? No, it wasn't. Was it the 1967 Sexual Offenses Act that helped combat homophobia? Absolutely not. It was Lenny Henry, Public Enemy, young black Arsenal players. It was Freddie Mercury, Will and Grace, Queer as Folk, David Bowie, Princess Diana. This culture.” 

While its biggest campaigns have been “punches in the face”, CALM will look to change cultural approaches, provide a “societal groupthink” to one that “currently rejects” suicide prevention. 

“The future can be better than the present and the past, because I really believe that’s how we prevent suicide.”

The best of CALM

Across the last 10 years, Gunning’s mission at CALM was “to smash the windows” he reveals.

“The first brief for adam&eve, which was around the time of the Theresa May election, was to smash the windows and run off, and then it was to do something borderline illegal, and then it was to win a Cannes Lion.” 

With its campaign Project 84 [see below], it’s safe to say the brief was met; “I found myself standing next to Theresa May in Number 10, announcing the creation of the world's first minister for suicide prevention, and there was the then most searches of suicide prevention on Google.”

This was a milestone that CALM would go on to beat with its collaboration storyline with Coronation Street.

More recent work, Missed Birthdays, tackled the topic of youth suicide, which detailed the life-saving skills needed to save young lives in its ‘C.A.R.E kit’ — check-in, ask, remain close, expert help. 

Gunning notes the daunting reality behind the work, being that “the most likely thing to kill my kid is themselves”. 

He adds: “We make all of the tools, especially digital tools, and our helpline that allow people to be suicide preventers for themselves and the people around them.”

Notes (2017)

Gunning’s debut work as CALM’s CEO saw the charity use real suicide notes donated by people who are still alive to raise awareness that suicide was the biggest killer of men under 45, for National Suicide Prevention Day. 

Missed Birthdays (2024)

The work looked to tackle the urgent issue of youth suicide in the UK, which, at the time, was the leading cause of death for people under 34, with women under 24 being the fastest-growing at-risk group. 

Alongside adam&eveDDB, Missed Birthdays raised awareness of youth suicide, with a major activation at Westfield, London, including 6,929 birthday balloons, each representing a young person who died by suicide across the last decade. 

The campaign continued into 2025, with the release of the short film, Evelyn — a true story of youth suicide, about a young girl called Evelyn who died aged 15. 

The work went on to win a plethora of awards, including three Cannes Lions and three D&AD pencils. More importantly, it created a platform hosting life-saving skills to help end youth suicide.

Project 84 (2018)

CALM’s work crucially created national conversation about suicide prevention — and led to the world’s first ever minister for suicide prevention. 

84 life-sized statues of men were placed on top of the ITV tower in London to highlight that 84 men die by suicide each week in the UK. 

The work led to the (then) highest number of Google searches for suicide prevention, and created conversation about suicide prevention in and around Parliament, with 400,000 people signing its petition for government to act on suicide.

The Last Photo (2022)

This campaign looked to not only raise awareness of a misunderstood aspect of suicidal behaviour, but also equipping the nation to help prevent suicide — even when the so-called ‘signs’ are invisible.

It focused on 50 6.5 foot high, unbranded, smiling portraits that were installed on London’s busy South Bank area. These drew in passers-by with their depiction of people living apparently rich, happy, care-free lives. However, it was later revealed live on ITV’s This Morning, that each smiling image was the last photograph of someone who soon after took their own life. 

The work went on to win the Film Grand Prix at Cannes in 2023.

The Invisible Opponent (2021)

Starring British heavyweight boxer Tyson Fury, Invisible Opponent was CALM’s first ever TV ad, as it looked to tackle the issue of suicide, with 125 people in the UK taking their lives every week - and 75 per cent of which being men. 

As a result of the campaign, calls to its helpline increased by 74 per cent during the week of launch. 

The campaign was again brought back a year later, starring Arsenal and England midfielder Declan Rice.

Decade-long reflection

Gunning further discusses his experience in leading the organisation.

Creative Salon: Across your 10 years here, what are you proudest of? 

Simon Gunning: I'm proud of growing the business, so we've gone from eight people in the office and eight people on the helpline to a total of about 173. 

I'm proud that we've gone through some really difficult times. We had a terrible start to 2024 where I had to take a lot of cost out. That was a lot of redundancies and a really scary time. And then we came out of that. We're now in a very sound financial position. We've got around a year in the bank, and the opportunities are coming more. 

And yeah, fuck it. I'm proud of winning the Grand Prix.

I absolutely know that The Last Photo saved people's lives because you can just see the spike in the use of our services and our helpline. There are people walking around right now who wouldn't have been if they hadn't seen 84 or The Invisible Opponent or any of our publicly focused work. So that makes me feel proud. 

Last year, I found myself on a stage in Edinburgh in front of 600-or-so pissed-up Scottish people, and I had to go on the stage and say, ‘Hello, I'm Simon. I'm from London, and I'm going to talk about suicide prevention.’ And then introduce Lewis Capaldi. 

Lewis said he would only make his comeback after Glastonbury if it was with us. 

Our ability to work in culture, as in with a small c: music, comedy, football. Very proud to have Declan Rice as our main football ambassador. Speaking as a borderline obsessive Arsenal fan. 

The Last Photo — at The Arrows when the Bring Me Sunshine music started, the acapella on the campaign, and you could hear a pin drop. The respect that it was given, the kind of queues of people just wanting to come up and say congratulations to Will and Mike and Ant and Miriam. 

What has leading a charity taught you about the industry that creative agencies didn't? 

People are really willing to help us out. I’ve come across massive wells of goodwill over the 10 years from people. 

There’s just the endless amount of goodwill from the team at adam&eve that I've seen replicated over time not only in agencies, but from the likes of Beaver Town and Iceland Foods and Lululemon and Carling and all of these other brands. 

What's been your biggest challenge as a charity CEO?

Making money is fucking hard. It's 10 times harder than the commercial ones because we're not exchanging a tangible product. I was in Westfield for Missed Birthdays and seeing the queue of people waiting for the Apple Store to open, just to go and look at stuff they're probably not going to buy, and this realisation really that we're not selling iPhones. Getting people into our shop is hard, especially bearing in mind the product we’re selling, is yes, hope, yes, survival, but it's suicide prevention — a product people don’t have on their shopping list.

Do you think advertising as an industry has got better at talking about mental health, or has it got better at advertising mental health? 

Agencies have pressure — the unrelenting, "more, more, get it done, more".

Nine o'clock on a Friday night, I've got to do my time sheets. The whole economic model of it means that it isn't an environment where people can be properly nurtured and looked after. 

As an industry, there's still an imbalance with the duty to the client and the duty to the teams, which is for obvious reasons. You've got to pay the bills, you've got to keep the lights on, you've got to pay people's salaries. Maybe we also look to the way the clients behave. Clients can probably help that by being a bit more human. It is a privilege being able to run a business exactly how you want, and that's one of the things that you can do when you run a charity.

The CALM Helpline is open to anyone over 18 affected by suicide or suicidal thoughts between 5pm - midnight on 0800 585858 or else contact it on Live Chat or WhatsApp.