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| By Safe Call Now's Dr. Laura Brodie |
Something
that is not recognized by many in the civilian world is that our First Responders
as a whole are more psychologically healthy than the general population at the
time of hiring. How can I say this?
Well, very few careers require the psychological screening and
assessment that First Responders have to pass in order to obtain their job. In doing such a screening, the hope is to
protect the public from someone who is unsafe, but the hidden benefit is to
hopefully protect the individual doing the job from many of the psychological
disorders that can develop from this type of work. So, if we use the premise that First
Responders are more psychologically healthy than their civilian counterpart,
why are we seeing the psychological problems we are seeing within First
Responders? Problems like substance
abuse, high divorce rates and suicide?
Theoretically, this should not be happening, but it is rampant. Why?
Mental
health professionals are very familiar with issues such as depression and have
many tools in their therapeutic toolbox to help. What they are not nearly as
educated in understanding is the environment of the First Responder and the
issue of burnout. Research has shown
that the leading cause of stress in First Responders is not the day to day
rescues and arrests they perform. Those
chores are why the individual signed up to do the job and there is clear
understanding of those tasks through the academies and ongoing training. What is not spoken of is the organizational
stress that is killing First Responders. Yes, it’s the slow, ongoing, and
constant organizational stress that is doing more damage to our First
Responders than any other factor within the job. As a professor, I have chaired several
dissertations that have shown this stress and the gradual breakdown of the
individual does not depend on the age, sex or rank of the individual. It
appears that the seven-year mark is where the stress can eventually become the
most significant issue for the individual and coping breaks down.
Organizational
stress is from the departments and the fall out from the public. It is the
gradual wearing down of the individual in all the tasks that have to be done to
cover one’s posterior through paperwork, to handle the misconceptions and
accusations of the media and public and the management of troops when
management classes and courses are not offered as a way to help the individual
learn how to manage. Moving up the ranks
many times is based on how one does the First Responder job, not how one
manages people. These are two different tasks and require a different set of
people skills. Both the manager and those below are set up to fail in system
that does not allow the training of management of personnel to be as important as
the training to fire a weapon, put out a fire or rescue a trapped person. It is
set up to fail.
