NFPA Journal - Summer 2024 - 50

Perspectives
I
t didn't take long for Jeff
Dill to notice that something
was off. It was 2005,
and several of his firefighter
colleagues in metro
Chicago had just returned from a deployment
to New Orleans to help the city
recover from Hurricane Katrina. The trip
had changed them.
" It was obvious that they were strugFIRST
RESPONDERS
A MILLION
PAPERCUTS
THE FIRE SERVICE AND EMS ARE LOSING MEMBERS TO
SUICIDE AT AN ALARMING RATE. AGAINST THAT BACKDROP,
THE FOUNDER OF THE FIREFIGHTER BEHAVIORAL HEALTH
ALLIANCE DISCUSSES THE CONCEPT OF MORAL INJURY, THE
LIFTING OF STIGMAS, AND THE STATE OF MENTAL HEALTH
AMONG THE NATION'S RESPONDERS.
Interview conducted and edited by Jesse Roman
50 | NFPA JOURNAL * SUMMER 2024
gling, " said Dill, who at the time was an
officer at the Palatine Rural Fire Protection
District in Inverness, Illinois. " The
devastation, the destruction-it was just
way too much. They were picking up
dead bodies in the streets. "
Despite their apparent trauma, it was
hard for the firefighters to ask for help.
When some did eventually go to the
employee assistant program counselors,
they had trouble relating their experiences
and grew frustrated. Dill, who is now the
behavioral health administrator at Las
Vegas Fire & Rescue, said this kind of disconnect
between responder and therapist
was common. " The counselors were great
people, but we never let them into our
world, so they didn't know anything about
our culture, " he said in a recent interview.
The experience inspired Dill to go to
school and become a licensed counselor
focused on firefighter mental health. In
2009, he founded a counseling service for
firefighters that eventually grew into the
Firefighter Behavioral Health Alliance,
an organization dedicated to educating
firefighters, families, and clinicians about
behavioral health issues in the fire service,
including suicide prevention.
In 2010, when Dill discovered that no
government entity or organization was
keeping track of how many responders
die by suicide, he volunteered to take on
that taxing job himself. It's because of his
efforts that we know that more firefighters
consistently die each year by their
own hand than from line-of-duty accidents
or injuries. By Dill's count, there
have been just over 2,000 firefighter suicides
since 2010, including more than 100
last year. Since his collection methods
rely on voluntary self-reporting by families
and departments, both numbers are
likely undercounts.
COLIN ANDERSON PRODUCTIONS PTY LTD/GETTY IMAGES

NFPA Journal - Summer 2024

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of NFPA Journal - Summer 2024

Contents
NFPA Journal - Summer 2024 - Cover1
NFPA Journal - Summer 2024 - Cover2
NFPA Journal - Summer 2024 - 1
NFPA Journal - Summer 2024 - 2
NFPA Journal - Summer 2024 - 3
NFPA Journal - Summer 2024 - Contents
NFPA Journal - Summer 2024 - 5
NFPA Journal - Summer 2024 - 6
NFPA Journal - Summer 2024 - 7
NFPA Journal - Summer 2024 - 8
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NFPA Journal - Summer 2024 - 50
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NFPA Journal - Summer 2024 - 120
NFPA Journal - Summer 2024 - Cover3
NFPA Journal - Summer 2024 - Cover4
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