Tag Archives: mental health

At the Fire Service Psychology Association (FSPA) we're working to "bridge the gap between professional psychology and the fire service." What is that gap? Good question, and here's the answer.

The driving force behind the Firefighter Health and Wellness Conference is Brothers Helping Brothers (BHB), a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organization, founded in 2014. Since its launch, BHB has given out 14 grants to advance its mission of “Helping Small and Rural America, One Fire Department at a Time,” to fire departments in Ohio and surrounding states. The genesis for the conference, according to Nick Magoteaux, founder and co-director of BHB, came in early 2018: “I was doing a fire EMS conference then, and I saw that there was a lot of interest in firefighter cancer. But not much on mental health. So, I got to thinking that mental health was a topic that needed attention.”

My contribution of "sunshine" today is to post this "round up", if you will, of posts from this blog along with other sources that I've encountered over the past couple of months as I've become more informed and educated about firefighter mental health challenges.

By: Nathalie Michaud After I received the diagnosis of my PTSD in late Summer 2014, I was partly relieved because now I knew why I felt and thought the way I did. It didn’t make it any easier to accept, but now that there was a name for it, a bit of the “ET” syndrome went away. I had choices: ...

During our panel discussion we discussed a term that hasn't gotten much attention thus far in the firefighter mental health conversation: emotional or mental hygiene. We'll go to the doctor when we feel flu-ish or a nagging pain. So why don’t we see a health professional when we feel emotional pain: guilt, loss, loneliness?

We'll go to the doctor when we feel flu-ish or feel a nagging pain. So why don’t we see a health professional when we feel emotional pain such as guilt, loss, loneliness?

Station House provides those in need with the tools in treatment to do their jobs without life altering consequences and to take care of them, heal them, and make them well again so that they may return to help and heal others as the proud, brave and dedicated first responders that they are.

What I find to be true for the points made by both Linda and MB Firefighter is that all but one—the impact of emergency incident management on firefighters—are entirely within our scope as leaders and managers to manage out of the fire service.

I've been involved with firefighters and the stress reactions they experience for over 25 years, so the recent trend to using the PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) term for all manner of stress reactions causes me concern. There is no doubt that firefighters and other first responders do sometimes experience PTSD. It has been my privilege to listen to several first responders who could be accurately diagnosed with PTSD. However, recent articles and “studies” purporting to be seeing PTSD in groups of firefighters are alarming in the use of rates for this diagnosis. A quick sample of these efforts indicates ranges form 17-24% of a cohort of firefighters who could be said to have PTSD.