Suicide among EMS/Fire personnel

[john51071]

Looks like I have stirred up a hornet's nest and some good healthy discussion! "letmesleep", check your emtcity inbox for my contact info. Hopefully I will learn a little more from the discussions, and in the end I hope to teach a little to a lot of people. Thanks everyone.

[letmesleep]

Mike, your right, my argument makes no damn sense at all, and maybe it is a kneejerk emotional opinion on my behalf. The unfortunate thing here is that I still feel as though it is selfish, being on the receiving end of suicide. It has been many years for both instances and the anger remains as strong as the day they happened.

[paramedicmike]

You think you're the only one who's had to deal with it? Why not just hope he found the peace he was looking for and move on? You'll never know or understand why he did it. So why project your emotions onto something that has nothing to do with you?

I think I know.

Good luck to you. There are some excellent support services in place. If you're still hung up on it those services might be worth checking into.

-be safe

[Dustdevil]

How is that even comparable? Cancer is cancer, you may choose things in your life that lead to cancer, but how is it that anyone can choose to have cancer, or any other disease out there, for that matter? What a ridiculous statement.

So, you think people "choose" to lose their spouse, job, health, or other factors that affect their quality of life? You're kidding, right?

Illness is illness, regardless of the organ system involved. Mental illness is no different than cancer in that respect. And anyone who feels any different has NO business in healthcare.

Why is it less selfish to worry about the ones left behind than it is to worry about the one currently suffering the most? I don't follow that logic.

John51071, so as not to jack your thread, I have hesitated to respond directly because I'm not sure I have anything you can use. I have known several co-workers over the years who have committed suicide. One, a former partner, is the only one that we had any reason to suspect it had anything to do with work related stress. And that one is not for sure since she had suffered a pretty chaotic personal life with failed relationships in the recent past too. It could have been anything, really, although I suspect it all came back to one really bad run we made that clearly haunted her for the rest of her life. She was never the same afterwards. The others, it seemed obvious that they were directly related to failed marriages or relationships, and not directly job stress related.

Anyhow, unless they leave us a note, how do we really know what they were thinking? How do we know what the trigger or final straw was? We really don't. Did the stress of the job get to them? Did the stress of the job on their family get to their relationships, eventually taking a toll on them indirectly? Or are unstable people just attracted to EMS and public safety? Do we suffer a higher rate of suicide than any other field? I think it would be hard to get any good numbers on that, thanks to the unstable workforce. Nobody stays in EMS that long. And, of course, the fragmentation of the workforce (between EMS, fire, cops, vollies, etc...) leaves us with invalid numbers, since we are really only a sub-group of them. Again, you can go through an entire EMS career with nothing bothering you and still become an Hero over a failed marriage or business venture. And some people are just mentally ill completely unrelated to their profession too.

Many studies in the past that concentrated on suicide and alcoholism in police officers have later been disproven, with the statistics being flawed. It's not an easy thing to get a clear picture of in our profession either. Good luck with your project. If I can help, I'd be happy to. But again, if we don't really know why someone killed themselves, we really can't honestly assume that it was the job that affected them.

[ERDoc]

To the OP, I'm sorry also for hijacking your thread since I don't have any info that you could use but I feel compelled to respond to letmesleep. A close friend of mine had her father commit suicide when she was 8 years old. He was a Navy medic who served with the Marines in Vietnam. I'll spare you the details but he came back disabled (don't remember what percent) and with a case of PTSD (would lock himself in the closet on July 4th to avoid the sounds of the fireworks, etc. VA said he was fine and didn't feel there was any need to help him). He got messed up in gambling and ended up owing loan sharks a large sum of money. They began threatening the family including the kids. He OD'd one day because he didn't want anything to happen to his family. He felt that if he were not around then the loansharks would leave his famiyl alone. Was he in a normal state of mind? I would say not. He did what he thought he needed to do it to protect his family. I would hardly call it a selfish act.

[letmesleep]

You think you're the only one who's had to deal with it? Why not just hope he found the peace he was looking for and move on? You'll never know or understand why he did it. So why project your emotions onto something that has nothing to do with you?

I think I know.

Good luck to you. There are some excellent support services in place. If you're still hung up on it those services might be worth checking into.

-be safe

Of course I'm not the only one who has ever had to deal with it, and your right I'll never know or understand why, but the anger is there because of the kids left behind. I don't care why anymore, its done and over with, as far as the act is concerned, but that doesn't change the fact that in either case there are kids that no longer have their father because of a choice he made. Has nothing to do with me? Maybe their reasons, but the clean up, and continuing care for their children has much to do with me, and yes, by choice.

I never questioned if you had ever delt with this Mike, and it looks as tho each of have and are dealing with it in our own ways. Thanks for the good thought!

[letmesleep]

Doc, as others have stated, how do you know thats what his reason was? It sounds as if the system failed him, it sounds as if his country failed him. I would agree that there was more going on with your friends father than I and most of us here could ever begin to read about, let alone try to understand. I would like to think that a father/ husband would go to any extreme to protect his family, but how do we really know why he committed this act? Even a letter wouldn't answer that for us, if I understood what Mike and Dust are saying. We just don't know or understand what is actually going through their head at the time they take their own life.

[ERDoc]

Considering the letter started, "I'm sorry for doing this, but I feel it is what I have to do to protect you from my mistakes."

Not much room for misinterpretation there if you ask me.

[john51071]

Dustdevil,

Thanks for the reply. I am in total agreement, after much in-depth research, and the assistance of a counselor and a psychiatrist, that it is virtually impossible to pin down any numbers. Instead, and what I consider more important than numbers in most any subject area, is to just focus on the problem, and try to find ways to possibly prevent some of them. I agree, also, after 21 years of EMS, that there are people who come into the profession as nuts, and leave it as nuts. There is really no way to be certain if it was job-related or not either. Unfortunately, I have spent a LOT of time to figure that out, and could have just asked you-lol. I doubt I will produce anything earth-shattering, but if I can help someone prevent a single suicide I will feel like I have contributed something...but again, I will never know...because it was prevented.

It does seem that I have stirred a lot of emotion in people. It is definitely an emotionally-charged subject area.

[john51071]

Also, guys and gals, when I complete the text and get the course prepared, I will be looking for a few places to offer it free, as a pilot...a work-the-bugs-out kind of thing. If anyone is interested in hosting for their department, give me a shout on emtcity.