Resilience Development in Action

E.202 First Responder Mental Health: Breaking the Silence

• Steve Bisson, Kevin Cornine • Season 12 • Episode 202

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What happens when those who run toward danger need help themselves? In this compelling conversation, host Steve Bisson sits down with Kevin Cornine, a former fire captain and battalion chief who's transitioning to a new role as a mental health counselor focused on supporting first responders.

Kevin shares his powerful story of serving 15 years in fire rescue while watching colleagues struggle with the profession's hidden costs. After his cousin, a detective, died by suicide in 2022, Kevin's path became clear – bridging the significant gap in cultural competency between mental health providers and the first responder community. "There's a large gap... it's a population, not necessarily a client," Kevin explains, highlighting how traditional therapeutic approaches often fail to recognize the unique needs of emergency personnel.

The conversation delves into the physical and emotional toll of emergency service work, from chronic sleep deprivation to the impossible choices made during crisis situations like hurricane season. Research shows that while spouses try to create opportunities for sleep recovery at home, they simultaneously experience resentment at their firefighter's unavailability for emotional support. This complex dynamic creates ripple effects throughout family systems that many therapists fail to fully comprehend.

Perhaps most enlightening is Kevin's practical advice for mental health professionals seeking to better serve this population. Rather than relying solely on training programs, he advocates for immersion experiences – spending time at fire stations, joining them for meals, and participating in debriefs after difficult calls. "Just sit at the table, just listen, watch," he suggests. "It's a family."

Whether you're a first responder seeking understanding, a mental health professional looking to better serve this community, or someone who cares about the wellbeing of those who protect us, this episode offers rare insights into a world where strength meets vulnerability. Join us as we explore how cultural competency can transform treatment outcomes for those who dedicate their lives to helping others.

We talked about several topics and here are some links to help you out: 

-Second Alarm Project (https://2ndalarmproject.org/)  in Florida want to help with education, peer support, and capacity building

-The International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF) (https://www.iaff.org/)  is committed to support firefighters across the United States And Canada

-NextRung.org is committed to make sure firefighters across the country know they are not alone. 

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Speaker 1:

Welcome to Resilience Development in Action, where strength meets strategy and courage to help you move forward. Each week, your host, steve Bisson, a therapist with over two decades of experience in the first responder community, brings you powerful conversations about resilience, growth and healing through trauma and grief. Through authentic interviews, expert discussions and real-world experiences, we dive deep into the heart of human resilience. We explore crucial topics like trauma recovery, grief processing, stress management and emotional well-being. This is Resilience Development in Action with Steve Bisson.

Speaker 2:

Good evening, akal, welcome again. Welcome to episode 202. If you haven't listened to episode 201, it is with Michael Sugru great interview. We talk the importance of treatment for mental health, for particularly first responders, and prevention. We talk about acute stress disorder, among other things. So go listen to it. But episode 202 will be with Kevin Corning.

Speaker 2:

Someone else I met through online sent out a who wanted to be on my podcast to a bunch of first responders in a group with clinicians and he decided to respond and I was very happy to talk to him. The interview has already taken place. I'm breaking down a wall here, but he was a captain battalion chief for Highlands Country Fire for about 15 years, currently in the process of obtaining his master's in mental health counseling. Who would want to go in that field? Right? He has a bachelor of science in industrial psychology. He is firefighter, paramedic and brings. One of the most important things that we're going to talk about probably is cultural competency, because I think that's important in this field. So we're going to definitely talk about that. And here's the interview.

Speaker 2:

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 you're going to write that note, and things like that. Getfreeai 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 will get 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 clients. 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, all the goals are generated for you. So getfreeai code Steve50 to save $50 on your first month.

Speaker 2:

Well, welcome everyone to episode 202. You know, one of the things that I love about my resilience development in action is now I get to meet a lot more first responders from all over the country, people who are very interested, interesting in their work. And Kevin here, kevin Cormine.

Speaker 3:

Cormine like number nine.

Speaker 2:

Cormine.

Speaker 3:

I don't know why I have an M.

Speaker 2:

I've heard both. I've been called worse right. Yeah, I've been called worse right. No-transcript, but anyway, Kevin, welcome to Resilience Development in Action.

Speaker 3:

Hey, steve, thank you for having me.

Speaker 2:

You know I always want to know more about my guests. We talked before this. I saw your messages. I was wondering if you were in the military just because he was early. Not only was he early, he checked on me the night before and he was really organized about everything. But apparently you're not in the military. But anyway, that's my little tidbit. How about you tell me more about yourself and our audience?

Speaker 3:

here. My name is Kevin Cornyn. I'm second generation fireman right out of high school in 2008. I've known what I wanted to be since I was a kid. I graduated, went into the field. It was hard to get into at the time in 2008. It was just kind of the economic decline kind of caused all the budgets to kind of freeze up and getting hired was really difficult. You're a dime a dozen. At that point I was able to finally get in and went to paramedic school about 2015,.

Speaker 3:

And then ended up working for a kind of bigger county about 100,000 people, started there as a part-time EMT, ended up working there as a paramedic and then they merged with their fire rescue, the fire services in the county and then became a firefighter paramedic there and then got promoted to lieutenant and then got promoted to captain and then moved into battalion chief spot. I kind of worked there throughout the course of about 15 years but then my cousin around April 2022, ended up committing suicide. He was a detective with Northport Police Department and he struggled with addiction as well. I went during that time. A little bit before that I ended up going to school to get my Associates in Emergency Medical Services and then I ended up getting my bachelor's in Industrial and Organizational Psychology and that was about 20,. 2021 is when I got my bachelor's and it's kind of since then I've kind of shifted from my passion in pre-hospital care and fire suppression to people management, development, training and that nature.

Speaker 3:

And then, after my cousin committed suicide, I'm like you know, I like this stuff, I kind of like this more and there's just there's a large gap in cultural competency between fire responders and therapists and it's a population, it's not necessarily a client. We all kind of go through it at some point in our career and if we try to go through the EAP program, we won't talk to therapists for like a week, maybe two weeks, you know, and what can happen you know in that period of time. And that's kind of where I'm at now. I have about a year left in my master's program. After this meeting at 9 am, I have a meeting at 3 pm with a therapist here in town to try to get some supervision established. So when that time comes I can do my coursework stuff here in town.

Speaker 2:

That was a mouthful. I'm sorry for your cousin, by the way, very sorry for your loss. I had read about it, you had told me about it. You know it really beckons the question. You were already motivated. You got your bachelor's degree in industrial psych and then you decided that after this that really concentrating on mental health of first responders was important, it seems like. Was that something that triggered it? Was this something that you were always thinking? That you'd go back and get your counseling degree or something else?

Speaker 3:

it was. It was a toss-up between that and pa, my wife's a nurse practitioner and, um, I got four kids. So like the schedule just didn't be coming too much. Um, there's kind of like that limbo of like do I do this forever? Um, at the time where I was at, we were mandatory a bunch of people at the time and it was just all of a sudden just kind of where I was at, we were mandatorying a bunch of people at the time and it was just all of a sudden just kind of let's see what happens. Happens, you know, like one of my good friends says, I was looking for a job when I found this one. You know, it's not always the end. So I was like well, my wife was starting her medical practice. I'm like this is a good time to leave and we'll see what happens. And my did his thing. It was just like this is all pointing me somewhere. Might as well not fight it. We'll see where it goes.

Speaker 2:

Your cousin was a detective.

Speaker 3:

You said yes sir, he was a detective in Northport, police Department.

Speaker 2:

You may not know this question I'm going to ask you anyway. Do you know what type of response they did for the department, as well as the families, or if they did anything?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, they were actually really awesome. After he didn't, he ended up committing suicide in the late at night and they sent people over from the police department. He worked about 45 minutes away. They sent people over, helped clean up, provide everything for the family for my aunt and uncle. They lived about 45 minutes away from me. They were amazing. And then all the support afterwards was incredible. They even reached out to me too. I was able to kind of keep a connection with them. They stayed in constant connection with my aunt and uncle. Then they had an amazing funeral service. It was incredible. And then they ended up planting a tree in his name at the police department as well as several other things. The support's been incredible.

Speaker 2:

I'm happy that they were supportive of you, because you know that's a hard loss. I mean, you know, one of the things that you know has been very emphasized in different interviews I've had is the level of suicide rates among first responders, which is absolutely bigger than most of the population. And they have the means, unfortunately, which is the hardest part. How do we change the culture of keeping silent to getting them to talk, to getting them to talk, because that's you know, and again, like talking to the therapist. I started like doing this stuff in 99, going to talk to the therapist, asking our first responder come and talk to me, be like, yeah, right, and the culture has definitely shifted, but I still feel like the shift is only about 20 to 30 percent there. It still needs. There's still a lot of work to be done, but I don't know how you feel about that. Just gave you a lot of um.

Speaker 3:

That's okay. My approach to all this is kind of going to be I'm definitely like my whole goal in this was for first responders, right. So my goal is all this to try and work with the union, specifically because the majority of the fire departments are union based. Um, because a big deal, a big deal is like if I have an um post-traumatic event that I need help with, right. So most of the departments have some type of chaplain service, which are great, but at the end of the day, they're not really culturally competent in that. Yeah, they provide an amazing service.

Speaker 3:

I'm not downgrading anything that they do, but a couple of my friends even try to do the chaplain service and one of my good buddies ended up having a um a pediatric death by a train, and he went to one of the chaplains and told him what happened. The chaplains, like I don't even know what to say, you know, and he's like what do you mean? I'm here to talk to you, you know, and I think that's kind of where it starts is it's not. It's definitely it's not. It's definitely not going to be, it's definitely not going to be probably self-brought in. You know, it's a therapist that they're interested in probably going to have to reach out to them and just establish that, that bridge of communication Number one, because a lot of them don't have time, because once they get done here, especially ones with families and every time I got off work I didn't have time to do anything. You know, I went right from work trying to get home as fast as possible, take my kids to school, you know, and I have two little ones. There was no time for me to go to therapy. You know that's tough, the demands of the job are really hard, and it's an agency that I did work at. One of their common sayings was it's not our fault, you have kids. Wow, yeah, and it's always kind of been that perspective of family, family second job first, and I think that that probably needs to stop.

Speaker 3:

Is that, um, that belief that this job is a calling? It certainly feels like it, but in the end of the day, it's still a job. That's not. It's not immune to the constraints, uh, the core, the core values and core kind of involvement with everything. It's still a job. It still affects family, there's work-life balance to be thought of, there's developmental issues, everything that we experience, the same things that Google does. You know we all turn over everything. So I think we need to get out of that culture going. You pick this job if you don't want it. There's 15 here behind you ready to line up to take your job when it's not the case anymore.

Speaker 2:

They were definitely expended pretty quickly right, I mean, you know the other part too is, uh, I always remind people that, while you can be married to the job, all you want, the job will never love you as much as you love it. And you know, I this is a conversation I have very regularly with guys who struggle with like oh, I gotta retire. And like you sound bitter that you gotta retire. And no, you gotta retire because you know what five years from now. Do you remember johnny doe who? I'm like, yeah, johnny doe is a guy when in in 2004 I worked with, oh, yeah, vaguely, he was like 20, like I can't remember him really.

Speaker 2:

I'm like, yeah, that's the point, the job will never love you as much as you love it. And it's not to put down the fire service, the police service or any type of service. It's saying that it's a job and you can love it. And I respect the love that you can have for first responder work. I certainly love my job as a therapist, but right now, if my phone rings and it's my daughter.

Speaker 2:

No offense, man. This interview is over. I'm taking care of my daughter and I'm not going to. I'm not really. I said no offense, but I don't really apologize for putting my daughter before you, but I think that the job makes you put everything for them, not all the time. I think there's a shift again there culturally. That's starting to happen, but it's taking a while it is and they kind of blame.

Speaker 3:

I hate the comment that you know the younger generation doesn't want to do xyz, when it's definitely not the case. And we look at now, look at you know millennials are. You know millennials are putting, you know, are trying to put rockets on Mars and the moon. You know it's definitely just how you approach it and, like you said, you can love the job as much as you want. And for about two years I was an educator at Treasure Coast Medical Institute and I would tell the young people coming in. I said you know, eventually this job is going to get to you. You know one of you guaranteed are not going to be able to do this job anymore mentally. And it's not your fault and it's not the job's fault. And you know you can't be mad at this job. You know it's definitely not, but it is one of the most rewarding jobs you'll ever do in your life and one of the fucking worst jobs you'll ever do in your life. You know, because you're going to be and I've been to one divorce.

Speaker 3:

You know there's so many times, you know, my wife would call and be mad about something and you know I'm an hour away and I don't come home until tomorrow. It was like you got to figure it out. You know I'm sorry you got. You got this one's on you. You know I'll handle it when I get home you know, and that's? How many times can that happen?

Speaker 2:

I think that's the other thing, that, as a soon-to-be fellow therapist, one of the conversations I have with therapists who work with first responder wives, kids, whatever husbands obviously too is the family has a different dynamic that you and I cannot even possibly comprehend. I mean, you obviously will understand a little better. I'm a therapist, I work with them. I still I've never been in that situation. Do you think that sometimes it starts with working with the family as well as the first responder, or do you think that we're doing okay with the family and the family's just got to suck it up by their cup and do their shit?

Speaker 3:

No, I'm actually going to pull up one of the studies I've been using. It deals with work-life balance.

Speaker 2:

It's actually my esoteric for those of you on youtube he's looking up. It looks like he was looking at it.

Speaker 3:

I have a huge tv above my computer for the stuff. No, it's a great, great, great, great question. Definitely, I think a major source at least. Again, it's firefighting is just like medication. I'm going to have a different reaction to the bed than you will. So my biggest thing is I've always wanted to be a dad, but I've also wanted to be a fireman since I was a kid. So anything that really happened at home I took as in it was my responsibility to. Even though I was not there, I'd try to do as much as I could from work and remind me later because it was not. That did affect me a lot when it was hurricane season and stuff. Let me write that down, so don't forget that. But the it does.

Speaker 3:

I think it definitely starts with the home, because when you come home and you want to sleep, you know a lot of times you can't. And a big shift is these the fire departments are trying to combat the high turnover rate and employee satisfaction. And, yes, good on them, you know, definitely. But having people work 48 hours and being off 96 is the same as a 24-48. But now you're expecting to stay at work for two days, you know, and you're still getting that problem with sleep recovery and everything else. You know that's very impactful because you still need to recuperate your rest, especially if you're in a department that transports too. So then, starting with the family, that's kind of where my goal is is to approach the family. When I do these things, when I try to go to the unions and talk to the firefighters, when I finish my coursework and get to that moment, I do want to focus on the families because it's going to be their main support when they go home. That's their cave of solitude. They want to. You know, they want to rest when they get home, and one of the studies I used quite often in my coursework.

Speaker 3:

It was published by the Oregon Institute of Occupational Health and Sciences, and they found that the results of the study were major themes centered around the increase in non-emergent calls that contributed to compassion fatigue. Spouses can help improve the sleep of firefighters by creating opportunities for recuperative sleep at home. However, spouses also conveyed underlying tones of resentment relating to their firefighters being unavailable for emotional, instrumental support. While married firefighters discussed choosing family and home obligations over reducing sleep debt to recuperate from the shift before Maintaining relationships, single and divorced firefighters spoke of fewer conflicts impeding their ability to prioritize sleep at home. So the conclusion of that, in short, was these results improved our understanding of how firefighters prioritize sleep at home, based on family dynamics, and can inform future decision-making for fire departments in addressing concerns related to work and family conflict, sleep loss and compassion fatigue among their members. And for me that was one of the big things. That hit home was. My issue was and even to this day I'm not what time do you think I went to bed this morning?

Speaker 2:

You didn't go to bed yet.

Speaker 3:

I went to bed at 4 o'clock this morning, oh okay, see, I was a two-five. Yeah, dude, I always.

Speaker 2:

For context it's 9 am here right now. It is Context for people online For God decks. It's 9 am here right now, so just give God decks for people online.

Speaker 3:

So I definitely, from work, I do have a sleeping disorder. Now it is what it is. Have I become more productive in my coursework? Yeah, it's helped me get a lot of stuff done, but there was nights when I was at the busiest station in the county at the time as a lieutenant and a paramedic and we rarely I would leave at 9 am, come back sometimes at 11 pm to make my bed. You know it's. We're busy all day.

Speaker 3:

That's plus reports that I have to do now and it kind of gets to the point like what's the point of sleeping? You know what is the point of going to bed? Because there's no point in sleeping and I just, year after year it's kind of what I did and it didn't affect my family, but it definitely was one of those things where, like, I had to plan sleep and then I wasn't going to get sleep when I got home because I have four kids and I'll have different means, the different uh things that they want to do. Um, but yeah, it definitely starts with the family in a certain way with sleep.

Speaker 2:

I mean, you know, one of the common things that I hear from my firefighters is that you're waiting for that tone to go off and your sleep is not that good because of that, because you're paying attention to that. Now, let's say you had a Q night. I don't even say the word, and if you don't get it, I don't care.

Speaker 3:

I love being busy.

Speaker 2:

But if you have a Q night, you're still like the guys may be talking in the other bunk next to you or what have you, so your sleep is still disturbed. So it really is hard to have like restful sleep, and that's something to keep in mind too. And you talk about your first responders, like my. I like that. My firefighters are like can I see you at 8 am this morning? I'm just going to leave the station, come over, and then I didn't sleep all night. And then you kind of have a good idea of what it is to go home and not feeling tired and not feeling rested. And then you get your kids to take care of and there's something that's not explained and when people work in that field around that yeah, and you're in your spouse all the time.

Speaker 3:

God bless my wife. But the common, common things where you get to sleep at work, it's like, yeah, but it's like you're sleeping in a mcdonald's. You know, you hear that all day long. And, um, when I was a captain of battalion chief, I had to sleep with my radio on. So, like you're hearing stuff all the time to this day, I still hear tones. I'll still hear tones of mouse it's been.

Speaker 3:

It's been almost a year. Yeah, I don't think that'll ever stop, you know, and maybe, maybe it will. You never know, but it definitely it. It impacts you. There's some times on the way home I live, I end up when I met my, my wife. Now I end up moving to the town she was in, which is about 45 minutes away from where I worked, and there was times on the way home I had to pull over and kind of sleep in the parking lot just to make sure I got home.

Speaker 2:

Okay, guys couldn't stay up any longer yeah, well, hearing the tones is a very common theme around my guys again, not comparing it at all, but I worked on a crisis team and we had a specific thing for the crisis team.

Speaker 2:

I can still hear it right now and I worked there for 15 years and I still can hear that ding. I can hear it. It's not the same as the tone you hear at a station, and if I knew you better, we are obviously just met. But I have a couple of firefighter clients as well as people I know I say, oh, here's your pillow, that's what you do all day anyway.

Speaker 3:

But of course, course I can't make that joke, I don't know I get it.

Speaker 2:

I've heard it all my life. You know well. At least you're america's heroes too. But anyway, one of the things you mentioned earlier which is, you know, I'll give the northeast view and when I mean northeast I cut it off to almost new england we don't get that many hurricanes. We get some, but we don't get a whole lot. However, there's a lot of people in New England that respond to hurricane stuff with FEMA and up here in Massachusetts, mema, which is Massachusetts instead of federal, and I think that you know there's a.

Speaker 2:

I want to hear your story. But I know the guys that I know go down to X, y, z I don't want to name a state, because they've been to pretty much every state. You get deployed. You might be there for five days, you might be there for 10 days or two weeks, and the families here they wait, and sometimes you go down there to hurry up and wait too, and there's a lot of different pressures that come with that and then like, oh yeah, we've already went down the street for the bodies in the bodies in these houses. There's something that's so matter of fact about it that sometimes is also disturbing. But I wanted to hear your experience with the hurricane season and other stuff like that.

Speaker 3:

So the hurricane season thank you for bringing that back up. But yeah, so my thing was, like always, family first kind of thing, and that was it became really conflicted during hurricane season. So since I lived about 45 minutes away from home outside I was in the next county over I was unable to go right when the storm's done to go check on my house and stuff, and my wife didn't want to leave because her mom's here, so they wanted to hunker down here. That's one of the things that's like yeah, a lot of planning goes involved and you're trying when you find out, like you know, you're getting all your weather data stuff from EOC and everything else like that, and you're you're trying to plan for the organization. At the same time, too, you're also trying to plan for for your house, and a lot of times what stinks is something will happen, something will change where, um, a shift might be on and then the hurricane's coming and it might change direction or hit a little sooner, when all of a sudden like, hey, it's gonna hit overnight instead, it's gonna be here a little earlier when shift change happens, so we're gonna have to stay in another instead of bringing another shift in and stuff. You know, god bless my daughter.

Speaker 3:

She's uh, she's 11 now, but trying to teach how to start a generator at eight years old, you know, trying to explain, like listen, this is you got to do this. My wife's small too, but I'm like you got, this is your job. I need you to pay attention how to start this generator. You know fuel, air, spark, all right. And she's like, okay, um, and I'm like I don't care if you tell mom how to do it, I just it. I just need you to know how to start this, because I'm not going to be here. You know, and that's the shitty part is a hurricane will hit, you're not going to have cell reception, you can't call them to see how they're doing, and then you're going to be stuck there.

Speaker 3:

You know, if you have an ESF assignment for me, um, from hurricane irma, I couldn't tell what happened. You know, I didn't know and not really know what happened until we got cell service back, which was about like 12 hours after the that the storm had passed. So I was kind of in limbo. I couldn't check my house, but I was making sure my other crew members were able to check theirs, that were in town, and that part was just really that was one of the big factors of me saying this is I'm giving the job more than I would give my family. My family would get a different version than the patients and crew members that I work with get, and I just kind of made that mental choice, going like my family deserves better. You know, I may have to suffer for a tiny bit, but they're definitely going to be happier that I'm home more.

Speaker 3:

We didn't have too much death with the hurricanes. It was a lot of logistics food, food, water, electricity, patient access. One year I forget the hurricane that came through, one of the rivers had flooded and we ended up having to get National Guard to get there. I forget if there were six byes or not, but there were large trucks that come through the water. Had the water get the people out of the house because they had, um, immobile patients and wheelchairs and stuff. Um, it was just emotionally draining. It was. It was more so, but we saw death all the time. You know, we saw death throughout an entire shift. We um, and we lived in, uh, what we called god's waiting room. So every every time we'd have, we'd run codes all day long and all week. So death wasn't really, you know, foreign to us. So that part annoyed, for me at least, it didn't really impact me a whole lot, but for others it might have. But it's just the logistics and the emotional drain part, I think, of hurricanes just bothered us the most.

Speaker 2:

I think it's also kind of like different for different people. You know, one of the conversations I've had before with a few people is sometimes it's not the first body that bothers you, it's the 27th one and it may be 27 years later. I'm exaggerating the point. At the end of the day, I think that that's the hard part is that what doesn't bother you may bother someone else, and what bothers you doesn't bother someone else or whatever, and it's always going to change. And how do we get away from the thought process? Because going to a hurricane, finding a dead body, would not bother me. But if there was like large decay, because it's been four or five, six, six days, there's something about that smell that just gets like. I've never done it in that particular instance, but I've certainly seen decaying body.

Speaker 3:

That gets to me a lot more I don't, and it brings up a kind of a funny story, but I had a. It was my first uh shift with my partner at the time. Um, and I just transported this guy um about a month prior, and then we get paged out to the area for an unusual smell at the residence and got out of the rescue with my partner. I'm like we're not going in there. He's like that guy's dead and he's like really, I said yeah, and we just opened the door and looked and he had a big dojo Argentina, I think, was a dog breed. It's huge. It ended up eating them to stay alive. It was. It was gross.

Speaker 1:

I was five.

Speaker 3:

My partner went in to get something. He comes back out and threw up all over the car. For everything else I'm like dude, come on God you're embarrassing us.

Speaker 2:

But yeah, I think, yeah, I think it all depends on the person and obviously and hurricanes is not just body recovery, sometimes it's just a maintenance and making sure you survive it. You know, and that's also like you said, you know the concern about the family and even concerned about your, your fellow. You know you're someone who works with you, seeing if everything is okay. I know that that's something that one of my uh, one of the hardest calls someone told me about is going to a house where they knew the person and they knew the family and there was a cardiac arrest of one of the members of the family. And keep it as vague as I can, I do believe in hip hop, even though it's not really my story. Right, yeah, you know, that's also a whole different ball of wax when you have to deal with a family or someone you know and you're going to hopefully not a code, but sometimes something pretty serious. Have you encountered that?

Speaker 3:

Or have you had encounters with family, like someone at work that was like that, or yeah, or have you had encounters with family, like someone at work, that was like that, or yeah, I'm trying to think off the top of my head if I ever ran a code with somebody that I knew.

Speaker 3:

I think I've ran a couple that I didn't directly know but as I started talking like to my mom or my wife, like oh yeah, we met them so a long time ago, okay, it wasn't, wasn't really connection.

Speaker 3:

I have ran people alive though that were my, that I knew, or my friends, and it never really bothered me because in my mind it was always like I'd rather me be transporting them than someone else, because, again, like we said earlier, like this job's kind of like medication, your experience that might be the same as my experience and stuff, but I really I took pride in my pre-hospital care and stuff like that and I'd really and, yeah, I worked with a bunch of very talented and amazing paramedics but I just felt like I knew I wasn't gonna let that friendship and stuff get in the way of my care and I would do whatever I could to make sure that I would treat them just the same as anybody else would. So I always kind of kept that in my mind going. I didn't mind and I wouldn't treat them any differently yeah, and a lot of them of the you know.

Speaker 2:

Professionalism is always key and you know what what I think happens my experience anyway is that it's not going and treating and being professional and doing what you need to do. It's the moment after to drop off at a hospital or to hand off to someone else or what have you. It's that realization moment sometimes that really people struggle with.

Speaker 3:

Definitely, but it also is, conversely, impactful too. You might get you know, you might do something really great. That's the stuff that I loved was you know you get a patient that you're given you know four, four or five different meds, and one of the calls in particular, when, after the hurricane, after I decided I didn't want to be a battalion chief, I left to go work at the county that my wife that we live in now, to try that and kind of restart you know and just kind of make sure that my feeling of I don't want to do this anymore is the same. So, basically, I started all over again as a probationary paramedic on the ambulance again, and that was 2022. So I tried that, ran a call. It was like my first, one of my first calls going through my credentialing process. Yeah, I believe in HIPAA too. I'm going to try my hardest. But, yeah, I ended up getting the lady was acting on respirations and immediately putting on a pacer, putting her in the ambulance. She woke back up. We intubated, we did everything Everything was great Put her back to sleep.

Speaker 3:

I won't tell you the outcome because it was unfortunate and it was the hospital, but one of the comments was made was like how long have you been off the rescue? I was like, well, not long. And like no one else would have ran it that smoothly and like to me I'm like that's awesome, you know, that's like what you want. It's very rewarding. You know those type of calls are really really great. Even though the outcome was bad. You did everything you could on your end Make sure that patient had every chance.

Speaker 3:

That part, you know that was hard to replace. And even in that's, one thing I don't think I'll ever get back. Is that I'll ever get back? Is that that, like even you and I are doing it are, you know common, you know vernacular and everything else You're not going to have? I can't call my kids fucking dumb. You know what I mean. Which you can call your partner yeah, why are you doing that? You know what do you? What's your problem? I can't tell it to my kids. So like it's. It's definitely hard going from you know, sharing your life with your partner to watching Bluey and Cocomelon all day long. But you know, at that part I do miss the most is that that banter that one of my guys would always leave the sink running. I don't know what his problem was, but he always left the sink running and, like you, pull him out of bed to go turn the sink off for the 15th time. That's the stuff I miss. I don't think I'll ever get that back.

Speaker 2:

Well, there's ways to get that back. But I think that one of the things that I encourage especially retired people, especially younger retired first responders, and there's groups. There's support groups for first responders all across the country. I certainly run one and I have a few retirees in there and most of them come after after a couple of months they go. I really miss this. This is great because they're not from the same department and all that, but they have that banter that you know that you could say to people that you can't say outside of that you know calling someone a fuckball out in the public they'd be like what the hell you call them? That in the group they all laugh, everyone has a chuckle and people. People don't always get that, but that camaraderie is probably what is missed the most once you retire.

Speaker 1:

I mean you can you can tell me what?

Speaker 3:

you feel, but that's what I feel based on my experience no, definitely I feel it now. You know, I mean, like I said earlier, I can't, I can't call my kids names, I can't call like yeah, I can criticize them, but they're they're going to say like what does that mean? Yeah, I mean, so it's like, well, fine, I'm not going to explain it. You know it's not fun, you know that was tough, but I do keep in contact with several of my friends and stuff that I worked with. Just the other day one of them ended up having to go to Daytona to pick something up me and we got to reconnect and stuff. But that part I'm hoping that when I do start working with first responders that'll kind of come back. I'm hoping I get to experience that more. But yeah, yeah it's, it's something special and that's the thing is, if someone's looking from the outside in and they're gonna be like what is wrong with these people and it's like, oh, that guy died for that guy, I mean fuck him, but I love him. So it's like that's, it's something special. And I think this one, like you talked about earlier, how do you change that stigma and stuff. I think that one of the big things like trusting your partner even more, that you can talk to him about that stuff Cause I one of my good partners.

Speaker 3:

His name is James Dion. He was there for my divorce. He was there for my kid's birth, everything, and yeah, those days I was not the nicest to him, but at the end of the day he knew, you know, he knew where I was coming from and man, he's helped me out so much during that time and you know several of my friends, that's the thing is I don't think they really knew how much they helped. And then that's probably one thing I probably should have needs to happen more.

Speaker 2:

Well, I think this brings up another point, Because something that's very important to me is cultural competency. We have a lot of therapists, you know, and I've shared this on the podcast before, but just to repeat myself, I work with first responders. All right, what's your experience with? I work with them. Can you tell me more? Oh, I work with them. Okay, you're not culturally competent. You're not telling me what it is. It's like people like I know about trauma. I'm trauma informed. No, it's not what that means at all. How do we increase cultural competency for anyone who wants to work in this field, particularly the mental health people, social workers too, obviously, but and even NPs, and I think psychiatrists could benefit from that too.

Speaker 3:

That's a great question. I think one of the big things I'm not trying to draw off my own personal experience, but I think one of the big things kind of outside looking in, go to the fire department and ask to hang out. You know, sit at the dinner table, they'll gladly serve you a plate. Coffee's always hot, it's strong as hell and they probably don't have creamer, but you know it is what it is. So, yeah, just sit at the table, just listen, watch. You know it's. It's a family. You know some families.

Speaker 3:

You know different engines, trucks, rescues, and also you have a family of 12, you know, sitting at the table and they're all different, it's all diverse. You have asians, african-americans, you know caucasians, you have indians. Everybody at the table, they all have different stuff. They're all making fun of each other. One of the things I kind of laugh about was it was in Detroit a long time, it was a while ago an African American firefighter. They ended up having watermelon at the station for when he came and like everybody was appalled. But the firefighter was like this is fine. He's like we do this all the time. You know, that's one of the things is like go experience the firehouse, go sit at the table, have coffee with them in the morning. Don't just come drop cookies off. You're not going to see anything. You're going to see hey, thanks for the cookies which we'll eat gladly. But you know you don't get to kind of see how. You know those cookies might sit there on the counter for two shifts because you don't have time to eat them. You know, see that, see how the banter is, I think. Definitely ask to do a ride-along. It's like a first responder, like a certified first responder therapist program or something like that. That's PowerPoint-based, you know, and it's free to go. You can go right now to a fire station and spend all day there. They're not going to kick you out. It's a public building. You know they may kick you out when they go on a call because you can't stay there, but when they come back, sit at the table again. But I think it's a great way to get involved.

Speaker 3:

One of my, when I was doing the interviews for one of my classes, I found a first responder therapist over in Port Orange area and what she would do is go to the academies and do kind of like a mental resilience day at the fire academy and stuff. And I was like that's genius. You know, go, go, get in there and not necessarily go through the trenches, but expose yourself to what, what the culture is. You already know, you see dead bodies and stuff all the time, but you don't know what it's like coming back to the station and then debriefing about it or or like the chaplain service coming in or stuff like that. Ask, ask to be a part of that stuff. They debrief all the time. Go part, be a part of a debrief and see kind of how that is. And it's free, you don't have to pay for anything, you can just go the reason why I was looking.

Speaker 2:

I wasn't trying to not pay attention to you. Okay, that's the program I think you're talking about.

Speaker 3:

I think so.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, part of the training is you have to do right along.

Speaker 3:

Perfect.

Speaker 2:

Okay and, by the way, my experience you said it exactly right I don't know of a firehouse in my area that if I said, hey, can I come and hang out Maybe it's you know they do shift change at seven 30 around here Can I hang around, shift change or go to the police department and hit the second shift? Uh people and say, hey, can I sit in the? Even like you can do a ride along or even just sitting in a dispatch to me is, you'll increase your cultural competency by a lot. I learned a lot from my dispatchers. I learned a lot from my dispatchers. I learned a lot by being at the firehouse and obviously learned a shit ton by going on the ride alongs when I worked with the police in particular, and going to a fire, because that's how we respond in Massachusetts.

Speaker 2:

Everyone responds and so I go to a fire, end up interacting with the firefighters or the families that have been through their worst day of their lives, and I think that you hear that as a cliche. But when first responders like, see is the worst day of someone's life and you can't describe that to people, you can't. You need to live it to understand what that means. You know like think about when you lost your dog or you lost your house or you lost something and someone had to respond for you, and how desperate you were. That comforting first responder believes fire EMTs dispatch whoever the case may be probably either made or break your experience.

Speaker 3:

Yes, and you did hit the nail on the head too. It's like we, at the same time, were to us, that's normal. Like, yeah, someone in your family is laying there lifeless on the couch and stuff, and it's like you are freaking out. But like for us, it's like all right, yeah, we're gonna do this real quick and then we're gonna go to the restaurant for breakfast, because 10am or 9am or whatever. But at the same time too, it's like we're dealing with all that, we're dealing with all your stuff. Likewise, like my daughter didn't wake up and miss the school bus and my wife is pissed off because you know now she's missed work and everything else like that, on top of your dealing with that stuff. So it's like, yeah, you dropped the patient off. Now you got to call your wife, now you got to figure out what happened, now you got to make sure you get your kid to school and everything else. So it's like we're still. We're always, something's always wrong, nothing is never going right and it's just that part's just gosh. It's so hard to just turn off and then multiply that by lack of sleep, training every day which training is great, but at the same time too, you do have to rest. You have to rest your body. Most importantly and that's the thing I'm learning now is you have to rest. You know you have to rest your body at the most importantly and that's the thing I'm learning now is you have to rest your mind. You know, and you know that's one of the tough things. It's like I do.

Speaker 3:

I did struggle a lot during my time there because it was you were stuck. You know it's not like you can leave and go to a different fire department and laterally transfer and like you work in it. You're a great it guy. You transfer to another IT place and become a supervisor if you want, but as a fireman you're stuck in a department for so long and you go to another one. They're not going to be like oh, you know a lot of stuff. No, sorry, you're just as shitty as the guy that comes in. That's never been a firefighter before. It's like, what do you do? You're stuck in that negative loop the entire time because you got to do something else. And that's kind of where education saved me. That's kind of why I made this jump so easily, because when I was out of the fire department before I got my paramedic, that was just mentally exhausting. The only way out was to go to paramedic school and I was a bad student all my life and I realized I'm not as bad as a student as I thought I was.

Speaker 2:

So that's kind of I was like I'll just go back to school, fuck it, I'll do whatever. I mean, it's always good to have another passion. You know what I? What I kind of see also correct me if I'm wrong is that most people, to do this job, you have to have a passion for the job, but if you don't have other passion and no, your family does not count. I'm sure you love your family and that's okay, but you gotta be able to. You know, enjoy going to play sports. I know, uh, what they call the newer generation. They get on their video games and just like blank out for hours on end. And underwater basket weaving works for me too. I really don't care what people do I see that joke great.

Speaker 3:

It's way up the rhode island too.

Speaker 2:

Huh, or massachusetts, we use the same thing yeah, I don't insult people in massachusetts by calling me, but you know I'm a montrealer so I've got many excuses. But you know, like that's what I tell people, I'm like I don't care what you do. Underwater basket, try to learn how to smell the color seven. I mean I don't really care what you're trying to do, but you need to have that outlook and not, uh, that outlet. I should say, um, in order to survive the job 100 and that's that, that kind of turned towards music.

Speaker 3:

I hated music growing up but now I love making it and it's just the complexity of it, it just kind of keeps my mind sharp you play what.

Speaker 3:

Synthesizer, electronic dance music oh okay, it's very technical, so it keeps my I like to make the comment takes my tism. That's the thing too is it brings. Are you One of the big things I'm interested in and I don't know if I'm eventually getting my PhD and research it and stuff but kind of getting into the sensitive topic of like suicides and stuff. They always make the comment like ADHD is rampant and firefighters and everything else like that and like it's kind of so I have ADHD as well, full disclosure and they kind of celebrate it but as like I'm now going through my studies and stuff like that, like ADHD is not good, like I'm now going through my studies and stuff like that, like ADHD is not good, you know it's it co-occurs with a lot of other things that aren't good and very rarely does someone just have ADHD.

Speaker 3:

Apparently they have a bunch of other things that they have to deal with. I want to research if a lot of the like do like a post, like a post-study of all these suicides to see if you're able to go in and do some historical gathering on on the families, to see if a lot of these suicides are linked to people with adhd. That's one of the things I'm like super curious about right now. I was wondering could have you found adhd to be a common adhd to be a common theme amongst suicide thoughts and stuff?

Speaker 2:

okay, yeah, because there's something about being either hyper focused or all over the place that suddenly catches up to you, probably not in the first few years in the service, but eventually, and I I've seen many times I I don't want to give a number because people are going to say, oh, be careful with that number- yeah, I get you yeah, but um, I've seen that five years, I've seen that 10 years and it's just.

Speaker 2:

oh, I didn't pay attention to this, I forgot that report or I missed the XYZ for paramedic stuff, and I don't again want to name anything particular. I do believe that that's a lot. The other one that I see that catches up to people because they're adverse child events ACEs test is usually pretty high is trauma, because hypervigilance as a police officer, as a sheriff, things like that, that's super helpful to be hypervigilant around you until it catches up to you. And I think that those are the two things you talk about. Adhd, I would also argue hypervigilance from ptsd catches up to you too you feel that, um, I lost it.

Speaker 3:

you're talking about hypervigilance and reports. Okay, do you find the high rates of? Do you find the rates of burnout to be excessive with patients with ADHD and first responders?

Speaker 2:

Again, generally speaking.

Speaker 3:

Right yeah, generalizing a little bit.

Speaker 2:

Because I'd always want to be careful and sorry. I went to research school in Montreal, so they always say correlation does not cause causation. So putting it out there sorry for all the first responders, I bored for half a second here I would say, within the first five years there's a significant burnout and again, this is my experience, there is no research whatsoever. I'm just telling you, my younger, like you know, the ones who hit 26, 31, or even the ones who start later in the thirties and they hit 35, that just catches up to them and they're like, oh my God, this was helpful at the beginning, but now, because of my poor sleep, my other stuff that's going on, it's taking over and I got to find other methods.

Speaker 3:

And again, results. Results vary and I was going, I was going to continue on what you just said. Did you find it worse after COVID?

Speaker 2:

It's a good question because I'd never thought about it Off the top of my head. I found that burnout went faster after COVID. But to attach it to a diagnosis, I can't say that I have, nor off the top of my head can I really feel like. What COVID did to the first responder world is everyone got to stay home and say it's wine, o'clock and all that horse shit, while first responders were in the community trying to survive this stuff. And I don't want to put therapists in the same boat as first responders, but I had to still do therapy with people and I'm always going through a pandemic too.

Speaker 2:

I'm not much of a online guy. I've been doing it for many years but a lot of my first responders are like I can't fucking do this online, steve, come face to face. So I was one of the weirdos. After three months, probably June, I was back in my office sitting there with my clients and people like you're going to die, you're going to die. And I'm like, well, they're fucking in the community, almost dying. Might might as well either join him or show him that I respect him. But I think that with that, I think the burnout went faster and I think that there was a lot of drop off in 2022 or so and you talk about suicides being a little higher during those years but also the dropouts of like fuck this shit and leaving the job altogether that's what I was kind of fearing for, because I just got promoted to lieutenant around that time and I felt bad for the guys because, like I didn't.

Speaker 3:

That's one of the things kind of I'm excited about as a counselor being culturally competent was when covid came I was not competent as far I guess you can say it's cultural competency as well but I wasn't culturally competent in that because I never worked through a pandemic. I worked through it as a leader but I'd never worked through it as a line unit worker. Um, and that was one of the things that I took kind of personally. I was like I got this guy running 20-25 calls a shift in all COVID. You know how do I? How do I make sure that person knows, like whatever they needed, even if they needed me to drive them home, I would drive them home like what can I do for you?

Speaker 3:

That was one of the things that I struggled with a little bit at the time was I was just making sure that they had everything they needed, because I felt just that burden of just calls, no support policy changes Every two days. A new policy would come out based off CDC guidelines, and it was just a mess. It was like, rightfully, I understand, like no one really knew what was going on, no one really knew how to how to deal with it, but kind of that first responder. In my eyes, that whole problem with first responders is like it doesn't matter if we don't know what to do anyway, we're just gonna do it, we're gonna figure it out. And it's like that part was just, it was rough because like it's not fair, um, and that it's at the burden of the, of the people that you know boots on the ground, you know it's at the expense of their mental, mental state, you know, and it's not fair well, I think the other part too is never forget the first responders.

Speaker 2:

There's a danger, the general population, the civilians, whatever you want to call them, run away from it. You guys are like I don't know what's going on in here, let me put on this coat, this oxygen tank and I'm going to run into it. And that mentality is hard to explain to people. Like, oh, I'd do the same thing, would you really? You know like I, you know like, as I'm not going to pretend I have a tough guy thing. But you know, when I even did, did the on the mental health stuff with the community, sometimes I'd be like, yeah, can you make sure it's safe in there before I fucking walk in? I'm no hero, we'll admit that freely, you know.

Speaker 2:

Eventually I got a little more comfortable, but at the same time, like we have someone uh, schizophrenia who is paranoid and has a gun. Uh, yeah, can we send the cop first, just saying I don't have a vest, I don't have a gun, I don't even have a knife on me. So yeah, and I think that that's the other part too. It's hard to explain to people how you guys go towards the, the danger. You're not running from the nature. I looked at the time man.

Speaker 3:

I was just I saw that was fast you know I want.

Speaker 2:

I want to be able to first of all re-invite you on Okay, and please come back on, because I'd love to continue this conversation, because I don't think I got to half the questions I wanted. But the most important one is I'd like to you know, I'm very well aware of Second Alarm Project. I work with them a lot. I work with the iaff, with the center of excellence in particular, and I get referrals from them. If you want to talk about them, that's great, but next rung is something I've never heard of, um, so I don't know if you want to talk about that yeah, I'll pop their um website too, real quick and, by the way, throughout this interview, I gotta tell you like as well, he's looking for that.

Speaker 2:

I, uh, if you get to youtube, there's the entertaining dog in the background that's trying to get in constantly. That's just been entertaining me throughout this interview.

Speaker 3:

Oh, you can see it through there. He's so bad right now.

Speaker 2:

I know, it's just funny.

Speaker 3:

So I just entertain so much.

Speaker 2:

And yeah, I guess I do have a little ADD kicking in for that.

Speaker 3:

Oh, it's too funny, you always scratch the thing. But yeah, Nextrung, um, it's kind of similar to the second alarm project, but they, they do provide resources. So if you check out their website, next rungorg, they offer peer uh, kind of similar to the second run. They offer peer support, training and things like that. Um, the core values are faith, family service and mindset.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, the second, I think that the second alarm project. I've met with some of those people out in florida and I absolutely adore the fact that they have assessments right online on their app and website, which I think is one of the things I do in my cit training. I throw the aces on when we talk about trauma, saying that it's for the community, but there's not one police officer that's not fucking doing the 10 questions on it perfect um and so I I.

Speaker 2:

That's why I really enjoy the second alarm project, the iff work with a lot of people there and they're awesome and I put all those in the show notes. What if someone wants to reach you? Can they reach you somewhere?

Speaker 3:

I'm 100. You can um email k corinne at gmailcom. You can check my instagram. It's mostly for my music stuff, but my wife will tell you I'll talk to a fucking rock all day. Um, so yeah, I'll talk to everyone. That's probably. My big problem too is, um, I do, I'll talk like even now. I can talk to you probably for the next 10 hours and be completely fine. You know, that's one of the things I'm with you that's why I'm excited for this counseling stuff.

Speaker 3:

It's like man I get, I get paid to talk to people more. This is gonna be great.

Speaker 2:

I love it that was my uh reaction. And when I was 16 and they said you know you're competent to be a fit, like, based on that, whatever myers-briggs I can't remember which one we use um, they're like oh, you could be a good therapist. What the hell is a therapist? They told me what it was. I'm like so people pay me, so I listen to them, tell them's wrong with them and then send them on their merry way. And they're like well, not that easy. I'm like yeah, close enough. Yeah, that's a good job for me.

Speaker 3:

There you go, evidence-based conversation. But, yeah, definitely email me Facebook, instagram. They can get in contact with me. That way I'll talk to anybody.

Speaker 3:

Another one of the organizations I didn't get to mention that I wanted to put on there was the fire service psychology psychology association. Um, they're trying to do a lot of big things like mental health assessments with with firefighters, kind of how they test police officers. There's really no test for firefighters, um, I remember taking some brief mental exam, but nowhere and um, nowhere near than probably what you should be testing for for a firefighter not not to be mean, just, you know, exclude people from the love and love of the job and get to experience it. But if you're not like the adhd thing, adhd might be a factor that we end up finding out that you probably shouldn't be a firefighter with adhd. You know, um, who knows? I don't know where that's gonna go. There's a lot of changes coming with um. You know iff's pushing for stuff. They have a great ex um uh, treatment centers, the fire service association, just all the stuff that's changing state statutes that are changing now cancer's front and center. Mental health has got to be next and we'll see where that goes.

Speaker 2:

I'm here for it, though I guess I come back on and we'll be there for the fight ourselves. But, Kevin, I really want to thank you for your time. I will put all that in the show notes and, yes, let's connect and get back together very soon 100%.

Speaker 3:

I hope so and thank you for having me and I hope I answered some questions.

Speaker 2:

And worst-case scenario people liked our fucking conversation.

Speaker 3:

There you go, thank you. Well, that fucking conversations.

Speaker 2:

There you go, thank you well. That completes episode 202, kevin. Thank you so much. Hope you join us for episode 203, uh, with nick johnson, and I hope you see us please like, subscribe and follow this podcast on your favorite platform.

Speaker 1:

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.

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