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Finding Your Way Through Therapy
Join Steve Bisson, LMHC as he unravels the complexities of therapy and counseling. Engage in straightforward dialogues, enriched with insights from special guests sharing a like-minded perspective. Each episode presents valuable, easy-to-digest information designed to help you perceive therapy, and those who partake in it, in a grounding, relatable manner.
Finding Your Way Through Therapy
E.187 Empowering First Responders: The Impact of Peer Support and Mental Health Resources
Exploring the critical role of peer support systems for first responders, this episode reveals both the benefits and limitations of such frameworks. Essential discussions include the inherent stigma in seeking help and the necessary cultural shift needed to create a more supportive environment for professionals facing emotional challenges.
• Definition of peer support and its relevance for first responders
• Pros and cons, including confidentiality and emotional burdens
• Discussion on skepticism towards professional therapy
• Examination of stigma around mental health in emergency services
• Differences between peer support and critical incident stress management
• Importance of cultural shifts and organizational advocacy for mental health resources
For additional ressources, go to www.copline.com for law enforcement personnel.
For fire services, click on www.iaffrecoverycenter.com
To reach me for my group, direct message me via this podcast platform or email me at stevebissonlmhc@gmail.com
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Hi and welcome to Finding your Way Through Therapy. A proud member of the PsychCraft Network, the goal of this podcast is to demystify therapy, what can happen in therapy and the wide array of conversations you can have in and about therapy Through personal experiences. Guests will talk about therapy, their experiences with it and how psychology and therapy are present in many places in their lives, with lots of authenticity and a touch of humor. Here is your host, steve Bisson.
Speaker 2:Alors, toujours dans le vieux studio still in the old studio. Welcome to Finding your Way. I'm your host, steve Bisson. If you haven't listened to episode 186, please go listen to it. Dave Roberts was a great guest. Really enjoyed our conversation, so go listen to him. We talked about grief, we talked about resources, we talked about a whole lot of different things, including his book, so go check it out. But episode 187, as we do this transformation to more of the things that I kind of work with, the people I would like to work with and the stuff that I want to do, including grief, trauma and coaching.
Speaker 2:But this one's going to be about my first responder stuff, and what I mean by that is this is that I actually don't do peer support myself because I'm not a peer. I've never served as a police officer, firefighter, emt, paramedic dispatch. I've certainly been in the field with everyone, but I am not someone who served in that type of environment, so I can't be a peer. A lot of people have asked me about peer support systems and what's in place, so I can't talk for the country. I can't even talk all that well about Massachusetts. I do know some resources, but let's start talking about what it is and what it isn't. So the first thing I'm going to do is talk about the definition of peer support. These are trained individuals who are in the same profession as the individuals that they serve, who provide support to their colleagues who are experiencing both professional and personal difficulties. So, in other words, it's people that you know that have been there, done that and have a few t-shirts, so to speak, and are peers. They're not mental health professionals, they are not doctors, they are not anything else but your peers and they've had a specialized training. I looked it up, you know, depending on where you're at in the country, trainings are anywhere from 24 to 40 hours. You can get specialized training, including becoming a crisis intervention stress management for a little more hours. I think that's an intensive 24 for a weekend for many of them. But I'm going to really try to stick to peer support, because peer support has so many advantages and I wish that there was more literally support and use of them, because I think that would be beneficial.
Speaker 2:Sometimes you know first responders. Again, if I'm breaking a wall, you can kick my butt, but first responders, you know, they like to talk to me. They don't mind the ones that I get to know. But a lot of them think that, you know, therapy doesn't work. Therapy is a joke. I've known people in therapy for so many years and it doesn't work and so on and so forth, which is, you know, really crap if you really think about it. But I get it. So you want to go to a peer. Maybe they'll understand you better.
Speaker 2:So what does a peer do? Well, you know, one of the things that I feel that happens is that there's a connection, instant connection. I'm a professional. Most people come in and they tell me I'm afraid to say certain things to you and they don't know where I'm coming from. Obviously, hopefully, they've listened to the podcast, they've talked to people who I know and they know that this is, you know, something I like to do, and not only that. I know the difference between expressions versus reality and I've worked long enough in this field that you know I have some collateral experience with all this. But anyway, just throwing that out as the work I do, including the group I run. But anyway, just throwing that out as the work I do, including the group I run. And if you ever are interested, let me know, just contact me here or email me. Everything's available online through my website.
Speaker 2:So let's talk a little bit about peer support. What are the pros and cons of it? The first thing that I would say is the pros is confidentiality. So peer support people typically have to maintain confidentiality of the story that's being told to them. That's hard, you know. Like I can't remember my firefighter friends will be angry listening to this podcast that I didn't remember. But you know how to start a rumors telephone and tell a firefighter. So that confidentiality goes a long way in those particular cases and obviously I don't know if I believe that, but I certainly know that a lot of people have said that to me about telling people at the stations. So keeping that confidentiality is important. Why do they get to do confidentiality? Well, they go to that training, like I said, 24 to 40 hours, give and take, give or take. I should say Very helpful for individuals to get that training and they have links to resources, not only from the training, but they get to know the resources in the community.
Speaker 2:I have a few peer support systems that call me and say hey, do you know someone who can work with someone in I don't know, let's say, a town? I've never had a referral to Florida, massachusetts or, hey, do you know someone who does ADHD evaluations? Knowing these resources come from peer support is very helpful. The other example is that they can be proactive. What I think that means is basically, if they see something at the station, they can kind of pull them aside and talk to them and knowing that they're the peer support person, that really helps. We don't wait till it gets worse.
Speaker 2:Once you, once you get to my office, so to speak, as a professional, sometimes there have been signs that people either didn't act upon or didn't want to really address. So that gives us you know, gives, gives the peer support person a lot more advantages than what I do, and I'm a big, big fan of that. Obviously there's cons and you know, one of the cons is that they don't have a professional training like me, and not that I'm saying that I'm better than anyone, that's not it, that's not the point. But we do have techniques, we have stuff that we learn over time with experience, also not only from our books, because books can teach you so much that's the nicest way I can put it. But that plays a factor.
Speaker 2:And obviously, being a peer, sometimes you come in with a bias. You know my bias is to. You know I don't. I do know a little bit about the profession, obviously, working with first responders for over 20 years. However, the point is is that I don't know everything and I bring you know kind of blank slate. Sometimes we bring a bias when it's coming from our peer, particular peer that comes from our station or where we're at. So that plays a factor, I know. The other part that has been told to me is that people are concerned to go to a peer because of confidentiality. They don't think that it really is a confidentiality to hold. You know, telegram, telecop, firefighter or whatever plays a definite factor in all this.
Speaker 2:I think that sometimes peer support people are very trained, but it can also become an emotional burden. I'm not going to. I have a few people who call me that are peer support type of people and eventually they're like there's so much need, what can I do? And you can hear the. They're exhausted. And you know, unfortunately there's not a lot of resources available for first responders. We're getting significantly better. I'm part of a group that hopefully, in Massachusetts in particular, we're going to be able to expand. But at the end of the day it's hard right to have all those resources. We have limited partials. In Massachusetts we struggle with having just mental health. It's usually the treatment centers for first responders. In particular has substance abuse components, not mental health, so that plays a factor.
Speaker 2:There's also a stigma. I talk about stigma all the time. There's always a stigma in regards to getting help and who's going to see me, go see the peer support person, what are they going to say? I think that can happen, but there are certainly times where I feel like it can be well-received and unfortunately, some people also see the person go to a peer support person in their fire station, at their police station, and they kind of go oh well, it looks like they need some help. So there's a stigma that comes from that. There's also a limited scope of what they can do. Right, they can't force any treatment, they can't do anything. There's a scope that is very difficult to, that is very limiting. And it's also a funding issue, right, some places, I think, pay for peer support people to pay them a little more, but ultimately the pay is also in the funding issues.
Speaker 2:Really a different, different ball game and something that I've talked over and over again. This comes from my good friend, jay Ball. Sergeant, Jay Ball, we need a cultural shift. Do I feel that there has been, over time, chiefs, lieutenants, captains, deputies, who have made that shift and have believed in peer support, helping others, being proactive? Sure, sure do? I think that there's still a huge stigma and the cultural shift hasn't changed. You know one of the things that I've heard before, and not too long ago as well I survived this long without having peer support or going to therapy. Why would you need something? So I don't know. That's the cultural shift is definitely something that's needed.
Speaker 2:I'd like to get into a few more details and kind of like going you know big difference between SISM and peer support and talking about those. But let's hear a word from freeai GetFreeai. Yes, you've heard me talk about it previously in other episodes, but I'm going to talk about it again because GetFreeai is just a great service. Imagine being able to pay attention to your clients all the time, instead of writing notes and making sure that the note's going to sound good and how are you going to write that note, and things like that. Get free that AI liberates you from making sure that you're writing what the client is saying, because it is keeping track of what you're saying and will create, after the end of every session, a progress note. But it goes above and beyond that. Not only does it create a progress note, it also gives you suggestions for goals, gives you even a mental status if you've asked questions around that, as well as being able to write a letter for your client to know what you talked about. So that's the great, great thing. It saves me time, it saves me a lot of aggravation and it just speeds up the progress note process so well.
Speaker 2:And for $99 a month. I know that that's nothing. That's worth my time, that's worth my money. You know, the best part of it too is that if you want to go and put in the code Steve50, when you get the service at the checkout code is Steve50, you get $50 off your first month and if you get a whole year, you save a whole 10% for the whole year. So, again, steve50 at checkout for getfreeai, we'll give you $50 off for the first month and, like I said, get a full year, get 10% off, get free from writing notes, get free from always scribbling while you're talking to a client and just paying attention to your client. So they win out, you win out, everybody wins, and I think that this is the greatest thing. And if you're up to a point where you got to change a treatment plan, well, the goals are generated for you. So get freeai code, steve Steve50, to save $50 on your first month.
Speaker 2:So one of the things that I talk about, too, is resources the limited resources. One of the things that you can use is 1-800-COPLINE for police officers in particular. Law enforcement Copline is available nationwide, 24-7, and they can probably help you. That definitely helps to get something like that. For firefighters, there's the IAFF, or the International Association of Firefighters, who have been very helpful to me, by the way. Not only have they trained me on different things, they also have helped me get people placed when I had to do so, and they've helped me across the country right. So I'm not just in Massachusetts, they're available in many different places. I don't want to name those places, but, yeah, aiff is very helpful. Some that I'm not so familiar with, but I'm going to throw it out the International Association of Chief of Police, have really started to really push the peer support system, and that's where the cultural shift has started to be taking place and is really helpful. So hopefully they're doing a whole lot there too. And then there's the National Association of Emergency Medical Clinicians that have made a lot of efforts in order to train and help and support peer support systems across the country. So these are great things. If you want to look them up, they're probably available online. I'll try to put in all the links to them and if you don't get the links again, direct message me, I'll give them to you. Like I said, my experience is usually with IAFF and they've been supportive of me since the beginning.
Speaker 2:So the differences with the crisis intervention, stress management versus peer support. So for those of you who are not aware of SISMs or critical incident stress management, there's also SISR response, stress response so critical incident stress response, or that really helps to have all that. I really I think that those are beneficial for so many people and I really enjoy them. But sometimes schisms you know they. They have some pros and cons there too. So let's talk about those things a little bit here, cause I think it's important to tell the difference.
Speaker 2:So the first thing that you need to know is the peer support is very informal, you know. You go in, you talk to the peer support person. You don't need an appointment. You can talk to them, they can be proactive, you can be proactive, and so on and so forth. So that's kind of how it goes. Cism is much more formal. It usually has to be asked for due to an incident that occurred and has a formal like this is what we start with. This is what we're going to do next, this is what we're going to do next. This is what we're going to do next. And the peer support is very informal, with the conversations and all that.
Speaker 2:Cism happens after an incident, where you don't need an incident for peer support. You know CISM does come after an incident, but can you know after that? Peer support is helpful, but they're specific for that. Peer support is good before the incident, during the incident, after the incident. So there's that big difference. Cism usually has some sort of trained healthcare professionals that are involved, and not that our friends at the first responder world are not trained individuals. They obviously are and they're trained peers. They just don't have the same training as healthcare professionals, and that's all I'm pointing out when I say that. And CISM is very specific as to what needs to be done and what they're going to do, and there's boundaries and limits to it, where peer support can be a little more flexible and help you in different ways. Shapes or forms. So there's a. That's what kind of the difference is, and I feel like both of them are needed. Obviously, professionals like me are needed too, but that's the difference to me, the big stuff that we need to talk about and really address.
Speaker 2:I hope that made sense. For those of you who are in the first responder world, you're probably going to say, okay, this is a refresher for those who are in the first responder world who don't know. They may not. That'll be great, but, like I said, I'm going to try to link the IFF cop line, and a cop line also has a chat, I believe, so you can also do that via chat and then from there, I hopefully you can get some more resources that you need and let me know what you think and send me a message, tell me what you liked about it or didn't like about it, cause I'm always open to it. But for episode 188, you're going to meet Krista Gregg. She is someone that has worked in the first responder world. She is someone who has been on the crime scene area and she has changed her career for several reasons, and I can't wait to share that interview with you, and I hope you join me then.
Speaker 1:Please like, subscribe and follow this podcast on your favorite platform. A glowing review is always helpful and, as a reminder, this podcast is for informational, educational and entertainment purposes only. If you're struggling with a mental health or substance abuse issue, please reach out to a professional counselor for consultation. If you are in a mental health crisis, call 988 for assistance. This number is available in the United States and Canada.
