The tradition in emergency services has been to largely ignore mental health. This has never, nor will it ever, work. Recently there has been increased awareness of burnout, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and first responder suicide. Unfortunately awareness is not enough. Dramatic videos sharing war stories do not offer solutions for these problems. This book is designed to guide the audience towards solutions. Many people have asked me to write this book over the years. It seemed too daunting to me for a long time. After deploying to an active airport shooter situation along with a peer support team that I train and guide clinically, the Director of a large law enforcement organization learned of what we did and deemed our response as “best practice.” This is the equivalent of a golden egg or Nobel Prize in my world. This alone spurred me to write the book!
