Part Of The Job

One in five Americans will experience a mental illness in a given year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Trauma and stress can cause fleeting mental health issues — or an ongoing disorder. The best thing to do to prevent a manageable problem from growing into a mental health crisis is to talk to a professional counselor, therapist or psychologist.

Unfortunately, many people eschew getting help. Some equate pushing through with strength and seeking assistance with weakness. But it requires strength to overcome mental health stigma. It requires strength to acknowledge that it’s hard to cope alone.

In the law enforcement profession, police officers may be mandated to go to counseling after they are exposed to the worst horrors of the job — fatal accidents, ghastly crimes, violent interactions — or counseling is strongly suggested and made readily available, depending on the department’s policies. When it’s mandatory, it frees officers from any concerns about how their colleagues perceive them. When it’s mandatory, getting counseling is just part of the job.

In East Hampton Village, Mayor Jerry Larsen has taken it one step further. Larsen, himself a former chief of the Village Police, has negotiated mandatory mental health counseling for police officers on a regular basis. In the village’s new contract with the police union, each officer must meet with a village-appointed counselor at least once every three years. The move acknowledges that job-related stress is cumulative and not just something that arises after a particularly traumatic event.

“Police are on the front lines of the worst moments of our lives,” East Hampton psychotherapist Mary Bromley recently told the Village Board. “Violent domestic situations, death, suicide, carnage with car accidents, often with people that they grew up with. Police are at the scene when mothers and small children die. … These officers deserve the opportunity to vent, cry, get angry, in a confidential, safe setting.”

Bromley said that learning how to express emotion, anxiety, depression and anger in the appropriate way should be taught from the police academy onward.

Considering that police officers have the highest risk of suicide out of any profession, it’s shocking that more is not being done already. Regular check-ins with mental health professionals can provide relief before police officers act out against themselves or others in irreversible ways.

The mayor and the PBA should both be lauded for casting aside stigma in favor of mental health — and other departments should follow their lead.