When the toils of the job become too intense, San Francisco police can take advantage of in-house mental health services to help cope with stress before it escalates into something much worse. Firefighters in San Francisco want the same treatment but are being rebuffed, reports The San Francisco Chronicle.
Post-traumatic stress disorder or mental illness are of particular concern to first responders, and can derive from extremely stressful situations in the daily job that build over time or even acute situations such as last summer’s crash of Asiana Airlines Flight 214 on the tarmac at San Francisco International Airport.
Currently, firefighters dealing with mental or emotional trauma can seek treatment through their health insurance or meet with the stress unit, which consists of two firefighters who received extra training and classes to handle such matters.
The Police Department also has a stress unit, and it can refer cops to doctors who specialize in addressing first responders’ needs once it’s determined more help is needed, said Shon Buford, a firefighter and treasurer of the San Francisco Fire Fighters Local 798 union.
For the past two budget cycles, firefighters have been asking for $100,000 for those same extra resources, but “we’ve been cutting our budget for a long time,” Buford said.
All city employees can access some level of psychiatric care, however the specialized mental health offerings to firefighters lag behind some other big American cities.
Other major fire departments, such as New York City’s, screen potential firefighters for mental illness. Current New York firefighters also visit with a mental health professional as part of their annual health checkup, SFFD physician Dr. Ramon Terrazas recently told the San Francisco Fire Commission.
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