The Kanawha County commission on Thursday, Aug. 22, 2024, discussed a program to offer free mental health services to first responders. (Kanawha County Commission livestream screenshot)
The Kanawha County Commission is considering offering free mental health services to its first responders, a measure Commission President Lance Wheeler hopes sets an example for counties across the state.
“Mental health is something that has really came up nationwide especially with our first responders since COVID,” Wheeler said. “…we want to make sure that we’re taking care of our first responders in every medical facet, whether that’s through their personal insurance, or looking at mental health as well.”
The county commission on Thursday had its first discussion about contracting with Christy Haynes , a licensed clinical social worker who also serves as a volunteer firefighter. Haynes specializes in counseling for first responders through her company, Overwatch. The county would pay Haynes a retainer fee to offer services to first responders free of charge.
Wheeler believes Kanawha would be the first county in the state to contract with a mental health provider to offer services to the county’s sheriff’s deputies, 911 operators, emergency medical services, as well firefighters for the 26 volunteer fire departments that serve the county.
Many of the volunteer fire departments don’t have access to those services through their employer-insurance plans, Wheeler said.
“But what we do know is that our volunteer fire departments are going out to calls of death, grief, loss, injury and they’re seeing these incidents firsthand, and a lot of them are carrying these with them,” Wheeler said.
While Wheeler said providing mental health services to first responders has been his goal since he became commission president earlier this year, the discussion comes just weeks after a Kanawha County paramedic died earlier this month. Wheeler said her death was felt hard throughout the commission and the county’s EMS and sheriff’s department. He said he wishes the county had been offering this type of mental health services before now.
“I think that her unfortunate death is the example as to why this is important, and we need to make sure that we’re offering these mental health services to all of our first responders and making sure that we’re taking care of them when they’re taking care of everybody else,” Wheeler said.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, first responders may be at elevated risk for suicide because of the stressful environments they work in. Law enforcement officers and fire fighters are more likely to die by suicide than they are in the line of duty. Studies indicate that between 17% and 24% of public safety telecommunicators have symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. According to a June 2023 study in the Journal of Safety Research, first responders accounted for 1% of all suicides from 2015 to 2017.
Chris Schilling is a bus mechanic by day and has been the chief of the West Side Volunteer Fire Department in St. Albans for a decade. He’s been a volunteer firefighter for more than 30 years. Schilling called the proposal to add mental health services “great.” The job takes its toll, he said, and firefighters never know what they’ll encounter on the job.
“Some guys have never seen some of the stuff we’ve seen,” he said. “This job ain’t for everybody. Everybody takes death [differently.] “
John Rutherford, director of Kanawha County Metro 911, said the types of calls that dispatchers handle affects them, along with the deputies who respond to them. The agency currently has mental health services that include a psychiatrist, critical incident stress management team and a local pastor available to talk with employees after a serious incident. The Overwatch program would be a welcome addition, he said,
Telecommunicators have very stressful jobs, he said. One minute they may be talking a caller through giving CPR to a person who’s had a heart attack or in cardiac arrest, he said, and the next they could be taking a call about a shooting or a police car chase.
“It’s just call after call after call of stress and sometimes not knowing the outcome,” Rutherford said. “And it just builds up. People need a relief valve for lack of a better word, to talk to somebody to talk about those experiences. And we do good job management wise, but sometimes it needs to be somebody that is just available to them to talk, somebody new and somebody available to put a different perspective on things.”
The Overwatch program would be available for on-the-job stress, not for personal problems, officials said.
Wheeler said the cost of the contract is still being worked out, but county officials hope to fund the program with money from the county’s public safety levy.
The county will most likely start as a pilot program for three or six months.
“We’ll see how it’s working,” Wheeler said. “As long as you know if the first responders are happy with it, and then from that point, will continue to grow with it.
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