COOPER COUNTY — Around 30% of first responders develop behavioral health conditions like depression, anxiety or PTSD, according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.
“First responders are all tough guys, we’re type-A, we jump in there and we run toward the danger, but nonetheless it’s hard,” said Charlie Brown, Cooper County Fire Protection District chaplain. “Things get brutal, bloody, and then you’re dealing with children or even pets. It affects people. They typically want to bury that down.”
Brown is doing everything he can to bring those numbers down in Cooper County. Two years ago, he started the MidMO Peer Support Group, dedicated to “serving those who serve.”
“The purpose of the peer group is peer-to-peer, person-to-person, it’s basically the same level, it’s not superior-to-subordinate,” Brown said. “They can work together and work with each other in such a way that’s to help the trauma settle down.”
The support group provides multiple types of sessions for first responders. There are one-on-one meetings, defusings, and debriefings. Defusings are conducted immediately following a potentially traumatic event, and debriefings are done 24 to 72 hours after an event, bringing in everyone who was involved with the incident.
“We walk them down through a very specific process that is designed and known to help them review the event, put the event in context, and then hopefully open up a little bit about how it affected them,” Brown said. “Then you help them understand what to keep an eye out for.”
The peer support team is composed of 28 volunteers.
“We took a 40 hour class to help us work with individuals that are having any kind of emotional issue, or even head things off before they get to an emotional problem,” said Brandon Hicks, Cooper County EMS chief.
Most people think of first responders as police, firefighters and EMS workers, but not everyone thinks of dispatchers.
Success! An email has been sent to with a link to confirm list signup.
Error! There was an error processing your request.
“Previous to us utilizing peer support, dispatch kind of just got thrown to the wayside,” said Tiffany Sawyer, director at Cooper County Joint Communications. “Nobody ever really thinks that there’s trauma that comes with calls.”
The support group has become more and more useful for dispatchers as they get more comfortable with the process, Sawyer said.
“Now, my staff is a lot more confident in talking about their feelings and talking to each other, even amongst one another, they’re able to say, ‘Hey, I’m not doing very well with that call,’ and I’ve seen them grow and blossom into being advocates for mental health,” Sawyer said.
Hicks has also seen improvements as a result of the support group.
“In the last couple years since we have started doing this, I’ve seen some huge changes just in morale, even here in the ambulance base,” Hicks said. “As a whole, we’ve never done anything like this. Since we’ve started doing debriefings, I feel like it’s brought our team closer together. It’s also helped us connect with the fire department. They see that we struggle with these things, too, sometimes, so we can all see that we’re kind of in the same position.”
Hicks hopes the support group will be even more successful in the long run. The average job expectancy as an EMS worker is seven years, and he said he wants that to be longer.
“I’m here probably 80 hours a week, so I spend more time with people here than I spend at home with my family, so these people are important to me,” Hicks said. “I don’t want to see them suffer.”
According to SAMHSA, nearly 37% of EMS personnel and firefighters in the US have considered suicide at some point in their lives. That is nearly 10 times the rate for the average American.
“I’d like to see responders deal with their mental health, you know, we don’t want to see anybody commit suicide, we don’t want somebody get out of the job where they had a passion for it that they loved, at the seven-year mark, and statistically that’s what’s happening,” Hicks said. “People are created for jobs in EMS, and dispatch, and fire. Not everyone can do those, and if you are created for it, I think that we should help keep your passion for the job alive.”