Teaching cops, firefighters and prison workers to recognize and know how to handle people with mental illness is a big part of the efforts to reduce suffering and death at the hands of law enforcement. Less talked about is the mental health of the cops, firefighters and prison workers themselves.
In the last two years, the number of suicides among firefighters exceeded the number of deaths in the line-of-duty, according to Jeff Dill, a retired firefighter who is chief executive officer and founder of the Firefighter Behavioral Health Alliance.
In these kind of jobs, human tragedy comes with the badge. For the most part, though, departments are doing too little to help their public protectors deal with the stress and trauma of it all.
“We see people die in our daily life,” says Andrew Shannon, public information officer for the Code Green Campaign, which offers peer counseling and other support services to firefighters and emergency medical personnel nationwide.
Stress levels are also heightened by lack of sleep. For workers in his field, Shannon says 48-hour shifts are not uncommon.
“We get sleep time, but it’s interrupted,” he says.
Mass shootings and natural disasters have become more common, likely worsening the emotional impact on police, firefighters and paramedics. Dill initially founded the Firefighter Behavioral Health Alliance, a counseling service for firefighters, in 2008, after seeing the impact that Hurricane Katrina had on the emergency response workers.