Many fire departments spend a great deal of time, money, and effort trying to address the physical hazards of fire and emergency services work.
As this story demonstrates, the behavioral health hazards faced every day by firefighters and emergency personnel are no less dangerous.
Even in departments with long-established mental health programs, we can lose our colleagues, or their family members, to the impacts of job-related stress.
I expect we all know brother and sister firefighters, active or retired, career and volunteer, who are struggling to keep their lives together.
If we’re honest with ourselves, I’m guessing we can all identify a time when we could have used assistance. If it hasn’t happened to you yet, just wait.
The big question is ... then what? Did you seek help? When? How? If not, why not?
While I don’t want to generalize, I think we know that we’re not especially good, as a service, at asking for help when it comes to behavioral health issues. After all, we’re the ones people call when they’re having problems, right?
And that’s exactly my point: we see things people aren’t supposed to see; hear things people aren’t supposed to hear; and do things people aren’t supposed to do.
It seems perfectly reasonable, in that context, that we should be the first ones to acknowledge when we’re having a problem and get some help! I don’t mean after the big one (although that’s also important); I’m talking about proactively mitigating the cumulative effects of our daily (over)exposures to pain and suffering.
We need to start thinking about behavioral health support the same way we think of seat belts: every call, every day, all the time.
