OUR SERVICES
Building a better bridge between first responders and mental health professionals requires better education and advocacy.
This education must go beyond raising awareness to provide real world solutions that include strategies first responders can learn to use on their own, outside of a therapy office. This education is not a replacement for professional therapy, rather a non-clinical resource for self-awareness and self-regulation that provides some form of therapy, rather than none at all. If we can empower first responders with neurological tools developed by the word's best mental health professionals, we have far more credibility in gaining their trust to turn to professional therapy options if needed.
We believe this strategic approach is far more effective than churning out more slick and savvy marketing campaigns and slogans to allure the trust of first responders to give professional services a shot and only after things have gone from bad to worse with regard to their mental health issues.
Our mission is to do just that, through the following education and advocacy services:
EDUCATION
TOTAL WELLNESS
Mental wellness must involve total wellness. This means education beyond mental, to include physical and spiritual, both of which effect mental wellness.
PRE-CRISIS RESILIENCY
Far too much focus has been on responding to crisis, rather than avoiding crisis, due to the absence of any education on foundations of resiliency.
SPOUSAL SUPPORT
The lack of both marital and mental health training for the spouses of first responders leaves a huge gap that contributes to the mental health crisis of their culture.
ADVOCACY
BETTER ACCESS
Mental wellness must involve total wellness. This means education beyond mental, to include physical and spiritual, both of which effect mental wellness.
CLINICAL QUALIFiERS
when they do turn to clinical help, first responders need better qualifying guidelines to find the best match to avoid unqualified help or deceptive marketing.
legal support
The lack of both marital and mental health training for the spouses of first responders leaves a huge gap that contributes to the mental health crisis of their culture.
TOTAL WELLNESS
When we speak of total wellness education, we refer to more than mental wellness, but the total balance of human health, which is found not only in our mental fitness, but also in our physical and spiritual fitness. Significant research on mental health shows that these three components influence each other, and yet education in first responder culture tends to leave out physical and spiritual health. The best chance at total wellness is teaching first responders to balance health in all three of these areas.
PEER SUPPORT AND THE TOTAL WELLNESS MODEL
This influence has led many first responder departments to transition from traditional Peer Support Teams into wellness models. Although Peer Support Teams have had impact on reducing crisis in first responder culture, their integration tends to be viewed by peers as a service to turn for mental health issues, and only after issues have already arisen. The general consensus, and even much of the marketing, of Peer Support Teams is regarded as a resource for people having issues like trauma or addiction. Much of the Peer Support Teams have had little if any training on building a culture of preemptive resiliency or self-regulation tools that first responders can use to increase the chance of avoiding mental health issues in the first place. We hope to help change that.
The development of the Wellness Team model for first responders was a response to this, by recognizing more than just the influence of the job on one's mental health, but also on physical and spiritual health, knowing that each impacts the health of the others. The science is clear that poor physical health will lead to poor mental health, and poor mental health leads to poor spiritual health, and vice-versa. Wellness Teams also have taken on a more aggressive role in offering pre-crisis resiliency training, especially for concerns like addiction and suicide.
Whether it be a Peer Support Team or a Wellness Team, our intention is to educate on total wellness for a more complete balance.
PRE-CRISIS RESILIENCY
Imagine the conceptual purpose of a chain that connects something of great weight. If but one link in that chain is weak enough to break, the entire strength of the chain is compromised, no matter how strong the other links in the chain remain to be.
In much the same way, our total wellness--that being our mental, physical, and spiritual health--is linked together as a chain that cannot function without the others. For this reason, we focus much of our educational efforts on teaching what first responders can do prior to any crisis, in order to reduce its impact or occurrence preemptively. This education is one of pre-crisis resiliency and is based on remarkable science that has been used in other high risk professions, but is relatively a new trend in first responder culture.
Resiliency: The Missing Link in the Chain
Pre-crisis resiliency involves learning a disciplined set of principles and strategies that have been proven to build resiliency in all three of the components of total wellness--mind, body, and spirit. Pre-crisis resiliency even goes beyond the job, to include the marriage and family dynamics and how marital resiliency can cross support the resiliency needed on the job. Traditionally, mental health training for first responders has focused on a first aid approach, leaving a dangerous gap of little to no training on how to avoid crisis in the first place.
SPOUSAL SUPPORT
A substantial amount of research supports a direct connection between relationship satisfaction and its influence on mental health. Studies suggest that high-quality relationships, characterized by support, affection, and positive communication, can act as a buffer against stress and mental health disorders. When first responders feel supported by their partners, they are better able to cope with life’s challenges. Research has also found that first responders in satisfying relationships tend to report lower levels of depression and anxiety. This is particularly evident when partners provide emotional support, validate each other's feelings, and share responsibilities in the relationship. Relationship satisfaction has also been positively connected to overall life satisfaction. A fulfilling partnership contributes to greater happiness, fulfillment, and lower emotional distress.
BETTER MENTAL HEALTH = BETTER MARRIAGES; BETTER MARRIAGES = BETTER MENTAL HEALTH
This influence is cross-supporting--meaning that better mental health creates better marriages, and better marriages create better mental health. Knowing the truth of this influence is only half the battle; implementing outreach services to the marriage and family of first responders is another challenge entirely. Many departments struggle enough with having the budget and staff to provide mental health training, much less any services to the marriage and family; therefore, the resources for such a service most likely have to come from external sources like us.
Unfortunately the nature of the job and the risks to total wellness often become a hindrance to relationship satisfaction as time goes by. We believe the key to addressing this is offering better education to the spouses of first responders, who tend to be ill-equipped to recognize the early signs of mental disregulation and lack the knowledge on what to do about it.
Giving spouses a better education on the brain, the body, and the job of their first responder partner, along with some of the same intervention training we give to Wellness Teams and Peer Support Teams, will go a long ways towards strengthening and preserving relationship satisfaction, and by doing so, we will, in turn, strengthen and preserve mental wellness in first responder culture over time.
The connection between relationship satisfaction and its influence on mental health seems to have flown under the radar of most mental health services to first responders--we join others in trying to change that.
BETTER ACCESS
One of the largest and most influential studies of first responders and mental health ever done involved a confidential survey of first responders that was circulated outside of their departments by researchers who were trying to determine what the ideal mental health service would look like and what conditions of access would prompt first responders to trust such a service, in light of how few of them traditionally give any chance to mental health assistance, whether it's clinical or non-clinical. The study gave over 30,000 first responders a chance to respond to questions about access to mental health services and the stigmas that prevented them from trusting them.
The results of this monumental study has given researchers and mental health professionals a peak into how first responders really feel and what they really believe about their own mental health needs and the services that have been offered to them. What we found was a unanimous reference to conditions needing to exist in an ideal program in order to gain the trust of first responders to give it a try.
These, in order of priority, included the following:
1
COST
The service must be free of cost throughout the entire treatment, not just an initial allotment of free access.
2
PRIVACY
The service must preserve anonymity, leaving no indication of its use anywhere that could identify the user.
3
RELATION
The service must not be offered by staff of their department, located on department premises, or require request for access through their department.
4
QUALIFICATION
Mental health professionals must be qualified to treat the specific challenges first responders face, including trauma focused therapies and/or a track record of addiction treatment and intervention.
CLINICAL QUALIFIERS
One of the common challenges first responders have unanimously mentioned in study after study is being mismatched with therapists who are not qualified to help them with their specific needs related to the job. Much of this comes from being referred through their Employee Assistance Program (EAP) to the same therapy resources the general population of city or state employees use. Other reasons include the assumption that a therapist must be qualified simply because they have had first responders as clients in the past.
Unfortunately, this confusion has led to countless first responders turning to professional therapy, only to be discouraged by the lack of benefit they feel they received from the experience (also indicated in many follow-up studies).
trauma informed care vs. traditional talk therapy
There are a variety of reasons for a therapist to be unqualified to achieve the ideal treatment response to the common mental health issues first responders face, regardless of his or her credentials and experience as a therapist. One element lacking is trauma informed care vs. traditional talk therapy, the latter of these two demonstrating an inability to reach the amygdala of the brain where trauma accumulates. Only certain trauma-focused therapies can effect the amygdala and begin to resolve such disregulation, and this is proven by specialized brain scans that show resolution over time, compared to talk therapy, which these brain scans reveal is relatively ineffective.
Talk therapy for first responders is by no means useless, especially in context of group therapy or marital therapy applications; however, stress and trauma residing in the amygdala can persist in activating the flight, fight, or freeze response (also called "amygdala hijack"), leaving first responders to feel as though talk therapy is a waste of time, rather than a complimentary option when coupled with trauma-focused therapy.
PROFESSIONAL MOTIVES: EGO OR PASSION?
Another challenge first responders must navigate is the abundance of therapists and treatment centers who market themselves as having first responder programs or even trauma informed care options, but are motivated by money or ego. The mental health profession is no more exempt from such motivations as any other profession.
Beginning in 2017, federal and state grants became more available to help first responder mental health issues, which was long overdue and led to a trend of creating better provisions; unfortunately, this trend also lured many self-seeking professionals who were less motivated to help than to benefit from the "gravy train" that ensued. Some mental health professionals marketed themselves as quasi celebrity therapists who somehow had a monopoly on being the best at helping first responders, usually due to being first responders prior to going into mental health, or being married to first responders--neither of which is any reliable qualifier, in and of itself.
Treatment centers for trauma and/or addiction flooded states like Texas, creating catchy program titles that made them appear as having specialized programs for first responders, only to provide inadequate care and often discharging them as soon as the insurance ran dry. Some of the celebrity therapists increased their cost of care as much as $700-$1000 per hour of therapy, and speaking engagements even more, while leaving first responders and departments high and dry, with little if any real change to their mental health crisis.
The result has been that unqualified or selfishly motivated professionals have made it more difficult to determine those who are indeed qualified and motivated by a true passion to help. Our goal is to advocate for better vetting standards through educational measures that are backed by the most accurate research and tested referral feedback.
LEGAL SUPPORT
The risk to first responders goes far beyond mental, physical, and spiritual wellness, to also include the potential for legal challenges. The nature of their job subjects them to the potential for being sued or needing to sue in order to preserve their career and finances. These often include topics like mental health coverage, use of force, worker's compensation, liability of injury, union/labor disputes, discrimination, violations of privacy, and investigations of criminal or policy violations.
While association unions provide a measure of legal defense, their protections are limited by dynamics that include scope of coverage, financial & jurisdictional limits, exclusions for perceived misconduct, and settlement vs litigation hurdles.
LEGAL RESILIENCY
Our mission is to advocate for better legal education and assistance for first responders, so that they are not thrown under the bus by the simple nature of their vocation if it leads them into legal trouble. Even in cases where guilt or liability is revealed under internal department investigation, considerations should be made with regard to how the job itself and the lack of mental health aid may have contributed. Depending on the gravity of the infraction, a first responder who loses their temper with a citizen or is revealed to have addiction issues, may better benefit from second chance options that include treatment, rather than a knee-jerk response of termination for being unfit for duty.
We achieve this mission through "legal resiliency" by educating first responders on legal rights and responses, while referring them to a qualified law firm who has the knowledge, the passion of personal interest, and a track record of success in representing first responders and/or their departments.
The First Responders
Mental Health Alliance
Fort Worth, Texas
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