A Free Mental Health Resource for All Public Safety Professions

The phone rings before dawn. A voice on the other end is panicked, screaming for help. A child is not breathing. Medical units, fire crews, and law enforcement race toward the scene, preparing for life-saving interventions—all while a telecommunicator bears the weight of the call, coaching chest compressions, maintaining composure on behalf of the patient, rarely seeing the outcome, always ready, and waiting for that next ring. Public safety professionals are trained to respond to chaos with calm, to face trauma with focus, and to carry burdens that most will never fully understand. But behind the radios, flashing lights, and stoic professionalism is a growing crisis that often goes unacknowledged: the relentless toll of cumulative stress.

Whether racing into burning buildings, arriving at scenes of violence, performing CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation) on children, or giving life-saving instructions over the phone, first responders are repeatedly exposed to high-stress, emotionally charged incidents. Unlike single critical events, cumulative trauma builds slowly, call after call, shift after shift. Over time, it reshapes how responders see the world and themselves.

Across the public safety spectrum—from officers and firefighters to paramedics and emergency communications specialists—professionals are silently absorbing trauma every day. Yet the systems designed to protect communities often fall short in protecting those sworn to serve. Mental health support in public safety is a necessity that agencies must address. Research on telecommunicators demonstrates the need for mental health support and helped in creating a free training tool that can be used across the public safety spectrum.

Reclassifying Emergency Communications Specialists

According to research by Dr. Michelle Lilly, a clinical psychologist and professor at Northern Illinois University who has extensively studied occupational stress in 911 telecommunicators, between 18% and 24% of these professionals meet the clinical criteria for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)—a rate comparable to or exceeding that of U.S. combat veterans. The National Center for PTSD notes that first responders, including dispatchers, face heightened risks because of their repeated exposure to trauma and limited opportunities to recover between incidents. Similar findings have been reported internationally. For example, a Canadian study of more than 5,800 public safety personnel found that nearly half screened positive for one or more mental health disorders, underscoring how widespread this problem is across the profession.

And yet, despite mounting evidence, access to mental health support remains inconsistent, fragmented, or nonexistent in many public safety agencies. When mental health in public safety is discussed, the image that comes to mind is often of an officer after a standoff, an emergency medical technician after a mass casualty incident, or a firefighter returning from a multi-alarm fire with entrapment. However, behind each of those scenes is a voice—guiding, dispatching, and bearing the emotional weight from the first second of the call to the last.

Emergency communications specialists—the professionals also known as 911 telecommunicators—are specialists. They are trained to manage chaos, communicate across agencies, make split-second decisions, and serve as the vital first link in the emergency response chain. They hear screams, gunshots, and victims’ last words. They hear the final breath of a suicide caller and may be the last voice that person ever hears. They process repeated trauma with no scene access, no visual closure, and often no time to decompress before the next life-threatening event comes through the headset.

And when the incident is over, in many systems, emergency communications specialist professionals are left out of wellness initiatives, excluded from peer support programs, and overlooked when mental health funding is allocated. They are expected to be calm, compassionate, and composed for every second of a call in real time—while carrying a level of emotional weight that often goes unseen and unacknowledged.

Addressing this mental health gap begins with reclassifying emergency communications specialists as first responders—not clerical staff. Their responsibilities, emotional exposure, and operational impact clearly reflect the role of a frontline responder, and their classification should reflect that reality. This effort has already gained traction at the federal level through the 911 SAVES Act, bipartisan legislation introduced in Congress to formally reclassify telecommunicators from clerical to protective service occupations. The bill underscores a growing recognition that dispatchers face the same level of stress and trauma exposure as other first responders, and that their wellness needs must be addressed accordingly.

Treating Mental Health in Public Safety

Across the public safety spectrum, mental health is often talked about—but far less frequently trained for. In many agencies, formal stress management training, peer support structures, or access to critical incident stress management programs are inconsistent at best—and completely absent at worst. The consequences of these gaps have been seen in real and tragic ways. For example, in 2016, a Fairfax County firefighter died by suicide after years of silent struggle linked to the stressors of public safety work and a culture where seeking help was stigmatized.

The dispatch community has faced similar losses. In 2023, a retired Boston dispatcher and PTSD 911 cast member, Nicole Ford, died by suicide. Stories like hers highlight that telecommunicators are not immune to the mental health toll of the job. Cases like these make clear that mental health in public safety is a matter of life and death.

Public safety professionals are expected to perform under high-stress conditions with few tools for long-term psychological resilience. While many police and fire departments offer employee assistance programs to provide counseling or crisis support, these services are often underutilized. Research shows that stigma, fear of career repercussions, and a cultural expectation to “tough it out” keep many first responders from accessing available assistance. Some agencies have begun addressing this challenge head-on. For example, the Chicago Police Department expanded its employee assistance program in 2019 by embedding peer support officers and increasing access to confidential counseling, which led to a measurable rise in utilization and reduced stigma around seeking help. Left unsupported, however, many agencies continue to see increased burnout, sick leave, turnover, and, in some cases, serious mental health crises.

Officers, firefighters, and emergency medical services personnel may receive some level of wellness education during academy or continuing education programs, but the quality, frequency, and delivery vary widely. For emergency communications specialists, it is even more fragmented. Many receive little to no training on how to recognize their own stress responses, process trauma, or access help without fear of stigma or career impact.

The training gap is a public safety risk. When professionals are not equipped to process what they carry, it affects decision-making, communication, and agency readiness. Addressing that gap means building accessible, realistic, and trauma-informed training solutions that serve every member of the response chain. After all, a surgeon is not expected to operate without instruments. A road would not be built without the right equipment. So public safety professionals—including emergency communications specialists—should not be asked to perform under life-or-death pressure without the proper mental health tools.

Training is a necessity. Rather than a one-size-fits-all national mandate, fixing the mental health crisis in public safety starts with intentional, local decisions to prioritize people over optics and to invest in wellness the same way as investing in fire trucks, ambulances, police cruisers, tactical gear, and communications upgrades.

Establishing Mental Health Supports

Effective crisis leadership is needed for emotional and operational reasons. When burnout, turnover, and mental health crises degrade agency performance and put communities at risk, mental health support is no longer optional. Budgets must reflect funding that is allocated, prioritized, and protected to ensure these services exist.

The need for mental health support spans the public safety spectrum—from the medical unit to the midnight dispatcher. However, the reality is stark: many agencies lack the resources, infrastructure, or funding to provide consistent access to mental wellness services. A 2018 report from the Ruderman Family Foundation found that, while first responders face higher rates of PTSD and depression, most departments still have insufficient funding or policies to support comprehensive mental health programs. Similarly, a 2023 Department of Justice Report noted that police departments nationwide face barriers to implementing wellness initiatives due to limited budgets, staffing shortages, and the absence of standardized federal guidance.

Emergency communications specialists (telecommunicators) are among the most routinely excluded from these resources, often considered support staff rather than frontline responders. Both APCO International and NENA have documented that many agencies fail to include telecommunicators in wellness programs or critical incident stress management initiatives, despite their clear exposure to traumatic stress. This exclusion is one reason why federal legislation such as the 911 SAVES Act has been introduced, seeking to reclassify telecommunicators as protective service occupations rather than clerical staff. If agencies are serious about retention, resilience, and readiness, then mental health services must be funded, embedded, and protected across all disciplines—especially for those who carry the burden silently, with no badge, no body armor, and no visual closure.

Preventing Moral Injury

But for far too long, public safety professionals have been expected to carry trauma without being given the tools to process it—or the permission to speak about it. That expectation is neither sustainable nor ethical. The result is deeper than emotional exhaustion or burnout. Instead, moral injury is the internal damage caused by witnessing human suffering, loss, and cruelty without the power to change the outcome. This line-of-duty injury is invisible but no less real than a physical wound.

Being serious about protecting communities includes being equally serious about protecting those who serve them:

• Change workplace culture, policies, training standards, and budget priorities.
• Recognize that emergency communications specialists are first responders, not clerical support.
• Ensure that every firefighter, officer, paramedic, and dispatcher has access to the same mental health resources, peer support, and post-incident care.

One of the most effective tools in this area is peer-to-peer debriefing through Critical Incident Stress Management. When responders, whether dispatchers or field personnel, are included in structured debriefings after traumatic events, it normalizes their experiences, reduces feelings of isolation, and provides an immediate support network. Peer-led debriefings also help break down stigma, showing professionals that it is acceptable and necessary to process what they carry after difficult calls.

The cost of doing nothing is already showing: burnout, staffing shortages, lives silently unraveling behind headsets and badges. The suicide rate among public safety professionals is alarmingly high. The 2018 Ruderman Family Foundation report shows that police officers and firefighters accounted for at least 103 and 140 suicides respectively in one year, more than those lost in the line of duty. For 911 professionals specifically, 37% reported contemplating suicide, with 6.6% having attempted it, in a survey representing nearly 10 times the national average for American adults. These figures reinforce what Dr. Michelle Lilly has shown: chronic exposure to traumatic calls significantly elevates risks of PTSD, depression, and suicidal ideation among telecommunicators—underscoring how dispatchers face mental health dangers on par with field responders, yet with less access to support.

Leveraging a Free Training Resource

Agencies do not need million-dollar programs to make an impact. What they need is leadership willing to embed mental health into their operational culture, just as firmly as training, staffing, and discipline. This includes creating peer support teams, incorporating stress management education into onboarding and in-service training, and giving responders access to real tools that do not require a crisis to activate.

In response to this growing need, the author developed a free, open-access training resource titled Building Resilience Through Critical Incident Stress Management in Public Safety Communications. This course was created as part of the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials Registered Public-Safety Leader program service project. It provides structured speaker notes, a participant workbook, and handouts that can be delivered as a two-, four-, or eight-hour class, or completed independently for self-paced learning. Designed for peer-to-peer sharing, the resource emphasizes no-cost, scalable access so that even smaller or underfunded agencies can implement critical stress management education. 

Public safety agencies provide many life-saving services, from boots on the ground to a voice on the other end of the phone. Mental health support should be available to any of these frontline workers who experience line-of-duty injuries, even injuries that are not visible. The free training resource mentioned here can help public safety professionals manage critical incident stress, build emotional resilience, and promote self-care strategies.