/Local News
1 / 2
From left are Washington County Sheriff’s Deputy Elizabeth Davidson, Healing Bridges CEO Natalie Ross, Chartiers Township Fire Chief Rob Fetty, and public relations manager for Canton Township emergency services Sheila Renz. They are members of Responders First Initiative, which is working to form a CISM (Critical Incident Stress Management) team for Washington County.
2 / 2
Chartiers Township Fire Chief Rob Fetty, left, along with Sheila Renz, public relations manager for Canton Township, middle, and Sheriff’s Deputy Elizabeth Davidson talk about the challenges first responders face on the job. They are part of a group working to form a CISM team in Washington County.
[expand]
close
A few days after a 15-year-old boy was struck and killed by a vehicle in the city of Washington while riding a dirt bike, Natalie Ross, CEO of Healing Bridges, received a phone call.
The call was from a distraught EMS worker who had responded to the April 14 accident, which happened in front of the Healing Bridges offices.
“The EMS worker on that call was looking to get help for the trauma from working at that incident,” said Ross.
That got Ross thinking. What if there was a program that helped first responders in Washington County deal with the devastating incidents they encounter on the job every day that can negatively impact their mental health?
The solution: Healing Bridges, with a team of first responders and public safety officials, formed a “Responders First Initiative,” a committee that is working to create a Critical Incident Stress Management (CISM) team for Washington County.
CISM teams are made up of volunteers that include trained peers – active or retired first responders who have a first-hand understanding of what their fellow first responders go through – and trained mental health professionals.
They help first responders manage and recover from the stress of their jobs through a range of interventions, including on-scene support at an incident, debriefings, peer counseling after the incident, and assessments to determine the need for additional services.
In a job where they often detach their feelings from their work in order to respond, discussing the traumas that paramedics, police, firefighters, and 911 dispatchers experience on a sometimes daily basis doesn’t come easily, Ross said.
And whether or not those in emergency services want to talk about mental health, studies show those traumas take a toll: First responders face higher rates of depression, anxiety and burnout compared to the general population.
One in four first responders suffer from depression, 34% are at risk of suicide, 30% to 40% suffer from substance or alcohol abuse, and police and firefighters are more likely to die by suicide than die in the line of duty.
“We put on emotional armor,” said Deputy Elizabeth Davidson of the Washington County Sheriff’s Office, who is part of the Responders First Initiative. “You have to do that when you’re walking into a house and there’s domestic violence, or you have to do that when there’s a fire, or when there’s an accident with children involved. And that emotional armor just becomes very difficult to take off. So ‘I’m fine’ oftentimes becomes a statement that is used all the time, even when you’re not. And so we think we have to be tough all the time, and to show any kind of weakness is taboo. But this job is hard, and I think that having places to say ‘It’s OK not to be OK’ and we can talk about those things is important.”
The CISM program helps first responders break the stigma surrounding mental health by pushing back on the notion that asking for help is a sign of weakness.
Chartiers Township Fire Chief Rob Fetty, a longtime firefighter and a church pastor, encourages firefighters to talk about job-related stress and trauma.
“It’s a vicious culture where, for so many years, we’ve been told, ‘Suck it up kid, you’ll be OK,’ but we can’t continue to live on the edge and not deal with things. And I tell my firefighters to go to counseling,” said Fetty.
Fetty was hit particularly hard by the death of a 3-month-old two years ago, and has since sought counseling.
“I’m not ashamed to tell my guys and women that I’m going to counseling. If I can’t help myself, how can I help them? We can either get the help we need, or we suffer.”
At an October training and outreach event hosted by Healing Bridges and the Washington County Department of Public Safety, nearly three dozen first responders turned out.
Dr. Sheila Roth, a Washington County native and a social worker who counsels first responders, and Deputy State Fire Commissioner J.C. Tedorski spoke with first responders about the challenges of their jobs.
“(CISM programs) are so important because first responders encounter frequent trauma, both emotional and physical,” said Roth in a phone interview. “They work very hard, and when you’re in a smaller department it’s all hands on deck and you get a lot more cumulative trauma. My hope is that they can continue to do the good work that they do and that they can get the support they need to not let this type of job make them have emotional and physical difficulties down the road.”
The Responders First Initiative team is seeking grant funding and/or other funding for the program’s initial $170,000 costs, along with additional continued training expenses.
Sheila Renz serves as the public relations manager for Canton Township’s emergency management and is a member of the Responders First Initiative.
“When I was approached about CISM, I said absolutely yes, let’s do this,” said Renz. “If we don’t put our responders first, there won’t be any responders left. They’re successfully suiciding, they’re turning to addictions to try to calm themselves, there are volunteer firefighters who are quitting their other jobs. These are people who go into community service because they want to help others. They’re doing the crazy things that nobody else wants to do – they’re running into the burning building, they’re responding to the domestic violence calls and they’re seeing horrors that we don’t want to see but we don’t want them to talk about either. They are so very affected.”
Fetty has been on the receiving end of the support a CISM program provides – an Allegheny County CISM team responded following the infant’s death – and believes that a CISM program will make it more likely that first responders seek help and take better care of their mental health.
Fetty said that while he has been around death and accidents hundreds of times in his years in firefighting, it takes a toll. He has been shaken by the recent passing of a woman who choked to death, and while off-duty he helped provide aid to a youth who was stabbed at a football game at Ringgold High School.
“That broke me, ” said Fetty. “I feel this is a calling, we do this because we want to do it. But if you’re getting burned out and getting PTSD and other things, it’s not sustainable.”
Davidson said the CISM program can help those affected deal with an immediate situation and then get additional help they need from professionals.
“The weight of our jobs can be crushing,” said Davidson. “What we want to do is find a way for first responders to get through this and make it less heavy.”
