SPECIAL REPORT: Humanizing Heroes

EL CENTRO, Calif. (KYMA, KECY) - The mental health of first responders is something not a lot of people talk about but the El Centro Fire Department (ECFD) is working on breaking the silence.

First responders are the first to arrive at the scene whenever dispatchers receive a call.

A job that comes with the responsibility that they must respond to everyday, multiple times a day, which can have an effect on one's physical and mental health.

"When I first started in the fire service, there really wasn't anything out there. Mental health really wasn't something that we even consider at all. It was something that you try to keep to yourself and you kinda bottle up the kind of calls that really effect you mentally. There been a number of calls that I've been on and they affected me mentally and they stay with me and they are little triggers that come back every once in a while," says Fire Chief Andrew Miller.

ECFD is working to bring awareness and support to their firemen.

"We started a peer support team here in the city of El Centro, with the Fire Department to try to get out there with training of some of our individuals so that all of our personnel can can kind of see how we navigate through difficult calls, how we can sit down and we can have after action discussions to vent out what we have just seen so it's not something just gets bottled up," says Miller.

The fire department has worked with "The Counseling Team International," a company that has helped provide proper training to help fire personnel with their mental health.

"We've reached out to groups that focus strictly on first responders. People who are intimately aware of the in and outs of our profession, who can engage our personnel in a matter that is consistent with what we do on a day to day basis...They understand the job. They understand the challenges, and so it's very important that we reached out to these providers because they are career competent and understand the ins and outs on what we do as first responders," says Fire Chief Joseph Bernal.

Firefighters are exposed to the tragedies and trauma that not everyone gets to see.

For Chief Andrew miller, he has a trigger of his own that makes him relive a traumatic call he responded to one night.

"It was on a Halloween night. I went to a traffic accident that was a very severe traffic accident that was a fatality traffic collision, and it wound up being that costumes are a trigger for me; certain costumes, [like] Snow White costumes for example, is a trigger for me," says Miller.

Not only is it a trauma they bring back with them to the station, but they also carry it back home and that can also impact their families.

Misty Bernal, who is married to an El Centro fireman, shares how it can affect significant others who worry about their spouses when they are out on an emergency call.

"Every time you hear the sirens go off, you're wondering what kind of call is it. Is it a fire? Is it a medical aid? What is it he's going to have to see this time? And how is it going to affect him? They leave for long periods of time on strike teams and the communication is very minimal," says Bernal.

According to a study by Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, firefighters and other first responders develop post traumatic stress at a rate similar to military service members returning from combat.

"We want to make sure that's no longer a stigma for associat[ing] with identifying that you might have an issue with after a traumatic call. That's really the main focus of what we've been doing lately...to try and bring that to become a norm within the fire service instead of kinda burying it aside, kinda turning your head the other way. Like I said, a stigma associated with it we're trying to change that culture," says Bernal.

According to the Ruderman White Paper on Mental Health and Suicide of First Responders, the suicide rate for fire fighters is 18 per 100,000 compared to 13 per 100,000 for the general public.

Fire Chief Bernal says ECFD also has support within each other with their small number of personnel working at the station.

"What's unique about the fire department, in general, is that there is a string comradery. A brotherhood, per se, a sisterhood even more so with the smaller department like ours. We have 40 personnel. Everybody you work with, their family, their children, so on and so forth. So, it's a more intimate setting when it comes to you know the community that we have at our fire department because of the smaller size," says Bernal.

ECFD understands the importance of mental health in their organization and will continue to strive to keep their employees in check of their mental well-being.