National Firefighter Health Week: Keep Your Head in the Game

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For the last three years, the National Volunteer Fire Council (NVFC) has sponsored their National Firefighter Health Week. FDNNTV.com's Barbara Brooks looks at behavioral health risks in today's feature: Keep Your Head in the Game.

For many, day to day life is stressful. Add to that the responsibility firefighters have when responding to emergencies and fight fires. That added stress is taxing both physically and mentally. First responders face a greater risk for anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorders because of the incidents they respond to daily.

Firefighters are exposed to incidents that many people would go a whole lifetime without ever seeing. It becomes very difficult for some people to process what they have witnessed, and this can affect them in many ways. Captain Kevin Klar of Los Angeles County Fire Department's "Fitness for Life" Program explains, "There's a wide variety of things that our people are exposed to. From children that are killed and they have to witness that to drownings and other really highly stressful situations." He goes on to say, "Sometimes, I know for me personally, the toughest incidents are those that you go to the incident and you really can't do anything about it."

Bravado and strength notwithstanding, a mental health provider for Los Angeles County, Dr. Steve Froehlich, is quick to point out, "You never know which situation might be the one that kind of gets to you, the one that might get you on that one vulnerable day."

Captain Klar adds a personal story, "One of my fellow firefighters that I worked with a long time ago, he was exposed to three or four different SIDS deaths within a matter of a few weeks. He had small kids at home, and so he started relating that to the kids at home and he really was having trouble processing that." As Dr. Froehlich reiterates,"The more personal the situation is, the more likely it is that the firefighter is going to have a more personal response to it."

In larger departments, like the Los Angeles County Fire Department, they have a Critical Incident Stress Debriefing Program where a behavioral health professional comes into a fire station to talk to firefighters after an incident, or after one of the hardest things to face, the loss of a fellow firefighter.

This can be a great help after something traumatic. Captain Klar explains, "They will go ahead and debrief them. They'll let them talk about it, they'll pull them aside independently and as a crew and kind of let them get it off their chest a little bit and kind of defuse the potential situation."

These professionals can also help with specific issues whether they are personal or job-related situations. Firefighters in this department can also turn to fellow firefighters that are trained as peer counselors.

"These are people that are trained to the level of a counselor and they can come to them at the station, they know what they're up against, they know what their job is, they know what they potentially have seen, they may have seen it themselves. They can be that shoulder for them to cry on, or listen to, or talk to, whatever they have. Give them that opportunity to in a non-threatening environment to kind of talk about what they've seen or witnessed," Captain Klar emphasizes.

This program through Los Angeles County has been around for a while and as Dr. Froehlich says, "What we have noticed over the last 15 years is that as the program is around longer and longer and we've had more contacts with firefighter personnel that there's more and more of a positive perception. And people say things like 'God, I wish we had done this earlier,' or 'I wish I had experienced this earlier in my career.'"

That positive perception is very important for a program like this to work in a department. "The more departments utilize peers and use their mental health component to train up the peers. Give them some skill, give them some tools to use with the guys then the more powerful the program," according to Dr. Froehlich.

Fire stations are like tight family units. One member of that crew is often someone everybody wants to talk with and that person could be a natural peer counselor.

The National Volunteer Fire Council offers advice on ways to ask community professionals to volunteer their time and services which will help the department and be rewarding to the health professional.

"This is the most important work that we do. We have private practices and we do other jobs but working with first responders, the folks that are going out and putting themselves in harms way, for us, this is the most powerful work," Dr. Froehlich says.

Through the NVFC, first responders can become educated about these behavioral risks online. The National Volunteer Fire Council has created a website www.healthy-firefighter.org giving firefighters and EMS personnel the tools they need to become healthier, mentally and physically.

FDNNTV.com's Video Coverage of National Firefighter Health Week

Join FDNNTV.com each day this week to learn more about some of the physical issues that firefighters face and what can be done to fight them.

National Firefighter Health Week:  Know Your Risks

National Firefighter Health Week:  Matters of the Heart

National Firefighter Health Week: Focus on Fitness & Nutrition