PTSD caused by duty spawns action across the nation

PTSD caused by duty spawns action across the nation
by
Chaplain Kathie
Massachusetts has reason to be ashamed when there is even one remaining branch of public service denying PTSD and what it brings to those who serve as well as their families. Haven't they read the newspaper articles about National Guardsman and women committing suicide? Haven't they read them about active duty servicemen and women trying to heal? If they do not recognize PTSD as being behind the suicides of those who serve, no matter in what capacity, then they are attacking all demographics with it.

This means they do not value the men and women serving as police officers, State Troopers or the National Guards or those in the military enough to learn much at all, yet they have one of the best Veteran's hospitals for PTSD in the nation right there in Bedford.

They have one of the best VA psychologists honored as an expert on PTSD, author of some of the best books on PTSD, Dr. Jonathan Shay, now retired from the Boston VA, but in all these years, he was right there to get them out of the dark ages.

When we know about something good being done, we assume it is happening everywhere but this is not the case when it comes to PTSD. One state may be far ahead of other states address the trauma first responders face everyday, but a neighboring state may still be totally oblivious to it. One state may have chaplains fully train on trauma and PTSD working with survivors but ignoring the responders, or visa versa. Civilians face trauma all the time but for most, it is only a one time event while responders face multiple traumas as part of their jobs. If we do not take care of the responders, then we are not honoring anyone's service. It's as simple as that.

My friend Lily Casura over at Healing Combat Trauma wanted to make sure I read the following. It makes me wonder what it will take for all of the people we count on everyday to be able to receive all the help they need to do it.

(Photograph by Webb Chappell)
A widow speaks "I have three children who need validation from someone other than their mother that this had nothing to do with them," says Janice McCarthy, whose trooper husband killed himself with his service weapon after years spent struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder.

The police suicide problem
Being a cop is a dangerous job -- and not just for the obvious reasons. Suicide kills more officers every year than homicides or accidents at work. But what does society owe the families of those for whom this high-stress job is too much to take? One widow answers: respect.


By Julia Dahl
January 24, 2010

Early on the afternoon of July 28, 2006, Captain Paul McCarthy of the Massachusetts State Police put on his blue trooper uniform, holstered his gun, and got into the driver’s seat of his police cruiser. McCarthy was despondent, exhausted from 13 years of physical and emotional pain. It all began on an overtime shift back in 1993: a snowy March midnight when a man driving a stolen MBTA bus bulldozed his cruiser, crushing his legs and trapping him inside the vehicle. After that came the surgeries and months spent learning to walk again. He fought hard and, defying doctors’ predictions, after a year and a half made it back to active duty in the only job he’d ever wanted.

In June 2006, he poured his frustrations into a rambling eight-page letter of complaint to the state Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, writing: “The Massachusetts State police do not recognize Post Traumatic Stress Disorder as an issue that affects the employees of the Mass State Police.”

It was all too much. On the last Friday of July, Janice and the kids were visiting family in Saratoga Springs, New York, when McCarthy stepped out of his apartment and got into his cruiser. At 6:30 p.m., he pulled up to a construction site in Canton at the junction of Route 128 and Interstate 95. A surveillance camera caught the last hour of his life: A passing thunderstorm roared through, then Paul got out of his cruiser and paced. At 7:30 p.m., he pulled out his gun and shot two rounds into a mound of dirt. Moments later, he turned the barrel around and fired a single shot into his chest. He was 41 years old.
When I went to Washington DC for Memorial Day last year, the Nam Knights also went to honor the officers as well. This picture is from the Memorial.

Janice took her case to the state retirement board, and in June 2007 her husband’s death was ruled “accidental.” The decision meant she would collect 72 percent of his pension (an “in the line of duty” death would have meant 100 percent and an additional one-time payment of nearly $100,000), but more important, it drew a line connecting his on-the-job injuries to his suicide, opening the door for what Janice McCarthy really wants -- her husband’s death to be ruled “line of duty” and his name added to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial in Washington, D.C.

In May of 2009, news of McCarthy’s quest reached Andy O’Hara, a former California highway patrolman and the founder of Badge of Life, a national advocacy group devoted to improving mental health training for law enforcement officers. The two began talking, and in December O’Hara and his colleagues established a working definition of line-of-duty suicide: “any police officer suicide in which work-related psychological trauma is a precipitant or significant contributor to the act of suicide.” To determine whether an officer suicide fits this definition, O’Hara suggests that outside mental health professionals conduct what’s called a “psychological autopsy,” collecting information through interviews with family and friends of the deceased and a review of his or her medical and job history.

O’Hara’s group is one of several like-minded organizations advocating for police mental health services. The National Police Suicide Foundation was begun in 1997 by a former Baltimore police officer and chaplain who lost a co-worker to suicide. In 1995, Teresa Tate of Cape Coral, Florida -- whose officer husband had taken his life in 1989 -- formed Survivors of Law Enforcement Suicide. Both groups are working to persuade departments across the country to add suicide prevention programs and awareness training for officers and to adopt more compassionate protocols for how to treat surviving families.

read more here
The police suicide problem