Low pay, multiple jobs, lack of sleep. The impact of the stress on first responders is not often talked about.
“[It’s]a lot greater than people realize,” Charlotte Fire Battalion Chief Andrew J. Starnes says.
It’s hard for the sights and sounds of the job not to be overwhelming.
“We have to deal with that that most people wouldn’t imagine,” Starnes says.
WBTV pulled numbers from multiple groups, and according to this data, more first responders died by suicide, than on the job. In 2017, the Firefighter Behavioral Health Alliance says at least 98 firefighters killed themselves, and a similar group Blue Help says the same is true of 159 police officers. According to FEMA, in the same year, 87 firefighters died on the job. The National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund says the same is true of 129 police officers that year.
Still, the FBHA estimates that only about 40 percent of firefighter suicides, for example, are reported.