Page 41 - December 2019 FOP Magazine

Mark Honzel is a retired police officer who counsels first responders for the Rosecrance Florian Program for Uniformed Service Personnel.
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Such support achieves what Honzel strives for with officers who come to the Florian program.
“They can break the stigma of opening up and asking for help,” he explains. “They can realize that the nightmares and job-related stress is normal. They don’t have to drink over it. And they can go back to work.”
Honzel has seen the opening up work. He, too, comes from an era when the day they talked about stress at the academy led to a specific recommendation about how to handle it. “We closed our books and they walked us across the street to a bar. That’s how we were taught to handle stress.”
But when Rockford Officer Jaimie Cox was killed while mak- ing a traffic stop in 2017, the department put together a make- shift therapy group the next day. A local church opened up its sanctuary and a group of more than 75 officers and their spous- es came and engaged in dialogue to process what happened.
Honzel is a big proponent of the group thing. He runs one where police officers – most of them retired – just come and talk. But they keep coming back. His groups at Florian help par- ticipants achieve a perspective about what led them to addic- tion and how to keep talking about it to get better.
“We’ve all been through the same things we’ve seen on a lot of calls and it normalizes it,” he relates. “When you have the op- portunity to listen to somebody else, you realize, ‘What they’re saying is how I am feeling.’ That’s 60 percent of the fight right there. We should put up a sign like they have at AA meetings: ‘You are not alone anymore.’”
Getting officers to realize the value of talking about the ef- fects of PTSD, anxiety and depression without having to worry whether the white shirts will hear about it is, of course, one of the barriers to getting help. The Florian program has generated many success stories, so perhaps shining a light on those will help officers start talking the talk.
No matter what color shirt they are wearing, talking – and lis- tening – will also help so many officers to realize that others are struggling just like they are. So just start talking.
“I’ve talked with your EAP guys and they are great listeners,” Honzel advocates. “If you can’t talk to them, call us direct. Talk to somebody, though, even if you have to go outside the depart- ment. Talk to somebody because you are not alone.”
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can keep treatment from being hell.
“It’s about reducing those barriers to access care,” DeGryse
explains. “As first responders, we’re taught not to be vulnerable. Vulnerability is a bad thing. So it takes people to show that it’s OK to be vulnerable so you can get better.”
What does it take to break through that tough outer shell of first responders to help them realize that what’s going on inside is indeed human? What does it take for them to realize that the effects they are feeling come from long-term trauma and com- mit to recovery to the point where they can keep the next per- son from struggling like they did?
Peer support might be the most important tool a police offi- cer in recovery can learn. The Florian program combines that with a holistic approach that includes nutrition counseling, how to get necessary sleep, exercise, yoga, additional therapies and faith.
DeGryse has recognized that this is not an approach by the book. “Show me a book that deals specifically with first re- sponders in recovery and I will pay for your meals for the rest of your life,” he quips.
But he believes the Florian program has achieved a unique approach to keep police officers from feeling disconnected in treatment, as any one of them would by merely being away from their district or unit.
“We try to emphasize the components of treatment to make it experiential,” he notes. “And you have to have the right people in place to implement it and facilitate it.”
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