Counseling group helps Conroe firefighters
Grace & Guidance Wellness counselors are on call 24 hours to help first responders in distress suffering from PTSD
Facing a high rate of longterm PTSD among firefighters, the Conroe Professional Firefighters Foundation years ago arranged for mental health clinicians to provide counseling.
But late one night, union president and Conroe Fire Lt. Lloyd Sandefer received a call from a former colleague threatening suicide. A clinician could not be immediately reached and there was usually a two-day response wait.
“I didn’t know who to call and I was scared,” Sandefer said.
The retired firefighter in distress received the help he needed and is doing well now, Sandefer said. “I thought, ‘Man, we gotta do better than this.’ ”
Now, the foundation has mental health counselors on call 24 hours for active-duty and retired Conroe firefighters via Lona Snell at The Woodlands-based Grace & Guidance Wellness.
Much of the occupational stress that members of Conroe Fire are confronted with is chronic, meaning it comes from a daily basis, Sandefer said, the deadly fires and fatal vehicular accidents.
“It’s helped a lot of our members,” Sandefer said of the move to Snell’s team two years ago. “Something that we didn’t realize before was how many of our guys needed help.”
The firefighters foundation spent more than $15,000 on sessions last year, each anonymously invoiced at $125 to the union’s 501(c)3 benevolence fund. The foundation’s board determined anonymity and no charge to the firefighters was essential in removing “roadblocks” to counseling, Sandefer said.
A study published in 2018 and cited by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, found there are more deaths by suicide among firefighters and police officers than in the line of duty.
Among first responders, “to reach out for help, there’s a stigma that goes attached with that,” said Montgomery County Precinct 1 Justice of the Peace Wayne Mack, whose duties include coroner. Mack was also a reserve officer for 15 years. Snell has “given a place where people can safely get the help that they need.”
Snell, 39, and three other counselors work with Conroe Fire.
She started Grace & Guidance three and a half years ago. It serves 17 first responder agencies in Texas through both in-person and virtual care.
She is married to a Baytown Fire lieutenant and has other firefighters and EMS in her family. Her kinship with first responders led Snell to focus on the occupational field’s mental health needs.
“I kind of had this pulling at my heart that I felt that all of our people and our family, they’re trained to go in with all the tools and the gears,” Snell said, “but there was a big gap, I was noticing, within the off-duty processing” of stress.
The other Grace & Guidance counselors also have some type of personal relationship to first responders, offering them a special insight into the “hardships” their line of work brings, Sandefer said.
Avoiding treatment can lead to maladaptive coping mechanisms, which offer short-term relief but come with long-term negative outcomes like addiction, Snell said.
A part of the care Grace & Guidance provides first responders is critical incident stress debriefing. For instance, Snell in late 2020 made it to a Conroe fire station shortly after firefighters responded to the scene of a 6-year-old girl fatally struck by a school bus. Snell spoke to the firefighters as a group and individually and offered them comfort following the traumatic call.
Grace & Guidance is one of four counseling services available to firefighters at The Woodlands Fire Department. Also anonymously invoiced, the counseling is funded by The Woodlands Township.
The sessions for the department cost a total of $60,000 one recent year, according to Woodlands firefighter Erik Secrest who is president of The Woodlands Professional Fire Fighters Association.
“I’ve had guys reach out to tell me that it’s saved their marriage,” Secrest said. “I’ve had guys reach out and say that it’s saved their life.”