Firefighters often silently suffer from trauma and job-related stress
Matthew was exposed to unimaginable scenes of pain and suffering in his job over more than a decade as a firefighter. The last straw came when he witnessed the death of a teenager – who was the same age as his son – from an overdose.
“The worst part is when you see an infant or a child die,” he told me during a visit. “Exposure to their family’s pain – and that you could not save that life – is very heartbreaking.” Matthew, for whom I’m using a pseudonym to protect his privacy, was being treated at my clinic for post-traumatic stress disorder and depression.
Images of tragedy, loss of entire communities and the terrible destruction wrought by deadly wildfires in the West have sadly become all too common. But the public hears relatively little about the suffering of the firefighters who risk their lives and are away from their families for days and weeks at a time. And though firefighters are primarily recognized for responding to fires, they’re also often among the first to arrive at all other manner of disasters and accidents too, as Matthew’s example shows.