Law enforcement a taxing career

FINDLAY — It's no secret that a career in law enforcement can be taxing, physically, emotionally and mentally. Law enforcement agencies across the country are reporting a growing need for better mental health resources. Every day first responders must make split-second decisions in potentially dangerous situations, are constantly exposed to trauma, endure long hours and show unrelenting empathy all while maintaining control of difficult situations. Law enforcement isn't usually called for good reasons. First responders are expected to be calm, cool and collected on someone's worst day. Locally, Hancock County Sheriff Michael Cortez said he believes the job presents cumulative stress. It's not necessarily any one day or one situation that's stressful, but the building of stress over time that can be detrimental to one's health. He calls it "ducks" and "bears." Bears represent major high-risk incidents while ducks are smaller, routine calls. But repeated exposure to those ducks, Cortez said, can be just as damaging as the occasional bear. The job offers a lot of variety. An officer could be issuing a parking ticket one moment and then be called to a casualty crash or case of child abuse the next. Cortez noted that situations can escalate quickly and leave lasting emotional effects. "Sometimes those circumstances that are created are really out of our hands and they can have a long lasting effect," Cortez said. "I think there's an inherent elevated risk with our job in everything we do." If that stress isn't dealt with properly, it can build into what Cortez calls "the pizza process." "You just throw it in your mouth and you shove it down into your belly and you don't ever talk about it," Cortez said. According to researcher Dr. Kevin Gilmartin, who has a background in both clinical psychology and law enforcement, cops see "blood and guts and gore" on a daily basis. Some may act like it doesn't affect them, but he believes the trauma of the everyday does impact officer wellness over time. Avoiding dealing with emotions and trauma can lead to deeper issues down the line. "The law enforcement profession loses more officers to self-destruction than it does to felony death," Gilmartin said. Law enforcement officers have a heightened level of constant awareness of their surroundings, a developed skill that can, in some situations, be the difference between life and death. Officers need to see the gun before the gun sees them. Steve Click, Director of First Responder Mental Wellness for the Ohio Department of Public Safety and retired Ohio State Highway Patrol officer, echoed Gilmartin when he said, as a law enforcement officer, he carried a heightened sense of awareness of his surroundings whether or not he was on the clock. "You do that for so much of your time that it's hard to turn that off when you're at a restaurant or you're at a movie theater," Click said. "You still tend to watch everybody and see what they're doing and kind of evaluate … It's part of officer safety." But looking for the threat of danger whether or not it exists is draining and may lead to eventual burnout. "This high level of alertness is exhausting," Gilmartin said. "It utilizes a lot of physiological energy. You're in a high sympathetic autonomic nervous system response. … After you have this elevated level of intense alertness, it's followed by a depressive state. The cop gets off duty and drops into this very, very depressive state where they don't feel like doing anything." This emotional rollercoaster then leads, over time, to what Gilmartin calls "the lethal triad." Officers isolate themselves in their personal lives, become angry and shift the blame to others to account for what they may be feeling. Instead, Gilmartin proposes that emotional resiliency is just as important as tactical skills. Officers need to find healthy ways of dealing with the stress of the job. Cortez agrees. "If you have that ability to have those coping mechanisms of how to deal with that stress at the time or you can allow that emotion to release, that helps the process greatly," Cortez said. Click's struggle, he said, is getting first responders to understand that it's okay to ask for help. He believes there is a stigma associated with mental health in the law enforcement community. While the stigma remains, the culture is shifting. "I think it's a culture that probably started way back when the first police officers started working and just carried forward," Click said. "What's exciting though is that this generation of folks are coming into the professions now, they don't buy into that. They want the help." While retention of officers has been a nationwide issue for many departments, Click said young people joining the field may not just be looking at which departments are going to pay the most in salaries. "These young folks are looking for which departments are going to take care of them, of their families," Click said. "And it's not all about pay … I think those agencies that are being very proactive on overall physical and mental wellness programs are going to find their retention is going to improve." First responder agencies are prioritizing wellness resources for officers, but still the stigma persists. "Leadership across the state and public safety is far more open to assisting their personnel than they've ever been, probably," Click said. "It's just getting folks to ask for help and realizing that it doesn't make them any less of what they are." According to Gilmartin, in order to truly make a difference, psychologists and other mental health professionals need to be specially trained to help first responders. "You can't just take the average mental health professional who's well-intentioned and very skilled and drop him into a police population and think he or she is going to be able to assist any more than you can take the average psychologist and drop them into a military setting and think they're going to be successful," Gilmartin said. "There's certain cultural competencies you have to know about in that field." That's where peer support becomes vital. Officers often feel more comfortable opening up to colleagues who understand the job's unique pressures. Under Cortez's leadership, deputies have access to an app offering 40 mental health resources. He believes mental health injuries deserve the same attention as physical ones. In a career where mistakes can be deadly, first responders need to be well, both physically and mentally. The challenge is that some may not yet be ready to accept help, but the hope is that that inclination is changing.