Page 38 - FOP August 2021

MENTAL HEALTH CONTINUED FROM PAGE 37
Brave Police and Public Safety Wellness Center in Chicago, has noticed members suffering more severe consequences. She used to see many of the issues correlate to drug and alcohol abuse. But Department demands have cut off connections with family and injected a lack of consideration for officers’ time that are causing huge disruptions in their ability to function.
“It’s about the hopelessness that leads to an inability to sleep, and it’s an attack on your resilien- cy,” Dr. Kroll submits. “The exter- nal stress is bad enough, but what you’re seeing is internal stress. There has to be an accountability to the Department to pay atten- tion to that.”
Change how you manage stress
A developing fulcrum of Lodge
7’s mental health and wellness
efforts is an app Mette has been
testing. He would like to build out
access to guides for five-minute
meditations members can use to
come down after a call or just take a break. He is considering any ideas to promote relaxation, like how some districts have brought in massage therapists to give 10-minute treatments on various watches.
And the app, as well as the entire program, will pack a very im- portant educational component. The education will further the concept EAP has been advocating for officers to look at mental health as a safety issue. They need to practice it and train with the same willingness they have to learn the law or hit the shooting range.
“It’s about recognizing that your mental health is just another component of your training, and working toward learning active coping skills and resiliency strategies isn’t something you do pas- sively,” implores Dr. Carrie Steiner, a 13-year veteran officer and a police and public service psychologist who created the First Re- sponders Wellness Center. “You can’t fix having to work 12-hour days or seeing a child murdered, but you can change how to man-
age that stress.”
As she counsels more and more
of her sisters and brothers, Dr. Steiner is plying them with more and more mechanisms to shake off the stress and anxiety of the day. At the end of the day, mem- bers should do something like take their hats off to realize they are no longer the police and can just be mom or dad.
If something more pronounced is needed, Casale suggests tak- ing a walk through the forest preserve, where tuning in your senses can be a good way to calm
down the hypervigilant police officer brain. Dr. Kroll directs of- ficers to maintain an anchor of hope, which she suggests can be faith – in anyone or anything.
And as the anchor of Lodge 7’s mental health and wellness ini- tiative accentuates, nobody has to go it alone.
“None of us can do this alone,” Dr. Kroll confirms. “I can’t do it alone. EAP can’t do it alone. The FOP can’t do it alone. Officers can’t do it alone. We’re in this together. It’s all about doing it to- gether. That’s going to make a difference.”
Officers are having all these troubles and don’t know where else to turn.
38 CHICAGO LODGE 7 ■ AUGUST 2021