The Best Western Hotel in Casper was the place. Cowboy country was the music. And the mental wellbeing of Wyomingโs first responders was the theme. From Aug. 5 to 7, firefighters, therapists, police officers, EMS workers, at least one coroner and several therapy dogs converged on the Built for Battle conference to talk about mental health and the stigma around addressing it.
โFriends in Low Placesโ by Brooks Jefferson played through some speakers. In between sessions, conference leaders raffled off boxes of Michelob Ultra and coffee mugs. People like Chris McDonald, a senior investigator at the state fire marshalโs office and former leader of the Wyoming Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force (ICAC), said this conversation wouldโve been unthinkable when he started working around 25 years ago.
โโIt would never come up,โ said McDonald. โYou suck it up. You’re going to see bad stuff all the time. Suck it up. We don’t want to hear about it.โ Almost 30% of first responders experience behavioral health conditions like depression and PTSD due to the stress of their jobs. Thatโs significantly higher than the general public, according to one study by the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.
Nationally, a study in the Journal of Safety Research found that first responders die by suicide at higher rates than those in other occupations. But data about first responder suicides in Wyoming are few and far between. The organization First H.E.L.P. lists nine such deaths in the state in the years 2016 to 2023, though that may be an undercount.
At a registration table outside the ballroom, McDonald and Ryan Hieb, the current leader of ICAC, talked with Wyoming Public Radio about bringing their jobs home with them. โYou see all these terrible things during the day and you roll up in your driveway at the end of shift, and you’re home to your family just like anybody else in the community,โ said Hieb. McDonald echoed that sentiment.
