By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
First responders – police officers, firefighters, emergency medical technicians and others – will face more “critical incidents” in a few months than most other people encounter in a lifetime.
They come face to face with the consequences of life’s dark side – sudden death, suicides. severe injuries, child abuse, rape, threats to their own lives, deaths of colleagues, and more. The COVID-19 pandemic has added another level of stress on top of that.
For the past 15 months, the Wood County First Responder Support Team has been reaching out to those who need help dealing with the stress, whether it’s directly related to incidents on the job or life issues with family, marriage, kids.
The support team offers first responders a chance to talk one on one, with full confidentiality, to a peer – someone who knows the drill. These volunteers have been trained through the Ohio Fraternal Order of Police.
Detective Scott Frank, of the BG Police Department, said members are trained in “critical incident stress management.”
Sometimes he said talking with a peer is all that’s needed. Sometimes more is required. The peer counselors are trained to recognize the signs when someone needs to see a clinician or therapist.
Those clinicians included those who have been trained to work specifically with first responders.
The team has contact with the ADAMHS board and NAMI. “They’re just a wealth of information,” Frank said.
“We have the tremendous support from mental health agencies,” said Lt. Ryan Patton, of the Bowling Green Fire Division.
That strong link with clinicians is one of the aspects that differentiates Wood County’s program from most around the state. “We’re peer driven, clinician supported,” Frank said. “Talking to a peer instead of clinician might be easier for someone to open up.”
The team also can come to offer debriefing for groups of first responders after a critical incident.
One of the challenges now is to get the word out, Frank said.
The team started taking shape in December, 2017. Frank, himself, was in a tough place personally. He was going through a divorce.
Then a Bowling Green firefighter committed suicide.
He reached out to Lieutenant Ryan Patton of the BG Fire Division. They recruited a hand-picked group of colleagues to start investigating how this kind of peer support could work.
What they didn’t realize is that similar programs were up and running in other parts of the state.
Connecting with Deirdre Delong, the coordinator of the Critical Incident Response Service Program for the Fraternal Order of Police of Ohio, pushed the program toward realization.
The Wood County First Responder Support Team went live in January, 2019, though people had been assisted by the team before then, Patton said.
Patton said as they’ve traveled around the county promoting the support team the response has been good. “We haven’t anything negative,” he said. “They’re glad the program exists.”
Frank said that there’s a list of people waiting to be trained.Still there’s more marketing to be done. “Our primary issue is letting people know we exist,” he said. Information is available on the super team’s Facebook page and website. A password is needed to file to ask for help, but it is widely available in first responders’ workplaces or from the contacts listed on the page.
The team does not replace or compete with Employee Assistance Programs that are also available to first responders.
In Bowling Green, the EAP is run through BGSU. Some first responders are concerned about confidentiality, because the program has to contact the city to confirm their employment. Frank said he doesn’t believe that is an issue. But it does illustrate how critical the need for confidentiality is.
“The biggest thing we’re doing now is breaking down the stigma of asking for help,” Patton said. “It’s not a weakness or embarrassment.”
Frank said even as someone who has been open about his own experience needing help, he feels some hesitation discussing it.
“The whole COVID thing is a big stressor for a lot of people,” he said, and for first responder it adds another level.
He finds himself wondering whether a traffic stop is worth making. That’s an internal debate that goes on with every stop.
Recently he had to respond to the unattended death of an 80-year-old who died of pneumonia. The firefighters went in first to declare the man dead, then Frank went in to do the rest of the investigative work. He told the other officer with him to wait outside, that he would do it.
He doesn’t have family at home that he needs to worry about infecting. Patton said similar calculations are made among firefighters.
Frank entered wearing full personal protective equipment, and when he got home all his clothes went straight into the washing machine.
The risk, he said was not great. And as it turned out the decreased had a non-coronavirus related type of pneumonia.
But the concern was still there.
Patton said the fire department’s “call volume has gone down a lot, but the stress on the call has gone up a lot.”
