Class puts focus on mental health of first responders and partners
Emergency services personnel face a barrage of challenges in their jobs and how those jobs mesh with their personal lives. The Multi Agency Academic Cooperative (MAAC) Foundation aims to bolster their mental health with a workshop Thursday from 8 a.m. to noon.
The course for first responders and their partners is titled “Post Traumatic Purpose: An empowering course on leadership, mental wellness and resiliency” and is given by Travis Howze, who has 14 years experience in the military and emergency services as a veteran of the United States Marines, a police officer, and firefighter.
He now travels internationally lecturing on wellness. This course has several objectives, including dealing with burnout, lack of empathy, and loss of motivation from career demands and repeated trauma exposure.
Those topics are top of mind for area public safety leaders. At its firstever meeting Feb. 16, the Porter County Public Safety Commission spoke at length of burnout facing its first responders who can’t often take time off due to staffing shortages.
This is in addition to the stressful nature of the work day-to-day. Portage Fire Department Battalion Chief Chris Crail, who is also academy commander at the Indiana District 1 Firefighter Training Academy, talked about the toll call-out tones take on first responders, even when the call isn’t from their jurisdiction.
“When you go from a heart rate of 60 to a heart rate of 120 it’s not healthy,” Crail said of the calls coming in at all hours and when people are trying to have down time.
The course also helps participants learn to recognize the subtle signs and symptoms of post traumatic stress before it escalates, as well as thriving after post traumatic stress.
Knowing, understanding, and effectively applying core leadership traits is another course objective. Portage Fire Chief Randy Wilkening said first responders often deal with a public that doesn’t realize how advanced their skill set has become, with patients saying, “Take me to the hospital,” he explained.
“They don’t realize we’re medical professionals now,” Wilkening said.
Career longevity and planning for life after the job requires planning for one’s mental health future, the course description states. It also requires communicating through trauma and stepping up to become the first line of defense as a mental health resource.
It’s a special kind of person who goes into this line of work, acknowledges Porter County Commission President Jim Biggs, R-North.
“Those kind of people who have whatever it is within them to do that are hard to find,” he said. This workshop helps them find ways to calibrate their minds.