By Heather Ruppe
Sometimes, when people are referred to you for support or for a mental health check-in, you don’t always know where a person is coming from. For a mental health professional, this can be especially challenging when the person who is coming to you is on the front lines of public safety.
To bridge this gap in mental health support, members of the firefighting and emergency responder communities in Colleton County recently hosted a special training for mental health professionals.
“The whole idea of this is that we have clinicians who work with us and we wanted to give them hands-on experience in real-life scenarios that we do, in the field. It’s critical that clinicians understand what we do and how they are a part of their wholistic approach,” said Angela Stewart. Stewart is a firefighter-paramedic with Colleton County Fire-Rescue. She is also the coordinator for the S.C. First Responder Assistants and Support Team, otherwise as SC FAST. The SC FAST group hosted the recent mental health training seminar in Walterboro.
As part of the three-day event, SC FAST hosted mental health providers from several states. These professionals came to Colleton County last week and received hands-on training. They were put into the back of an ambulance and did work on a youth patient (dummy) that was in cardiac arrest. They were taken to a smoke house, where they sat in darkness, under the veil of smoke. They were taken into a mock domestic violence call, where a man was shot and the woman who was his victim was screaming for officers and paramedics to do something.
Mental health professionals, like counselors and therapists, were also taken into several other emergency situations, all to show them what it feels like to be a firefighter or paramedic or law enforcement officer. The entire event was supported by Colleton County Fire-Rescue and by the Colleton County Sheriff’s Office.
Overall, 10 clinicians participated. They came from Florida and from hospitals and facilities in Charleston and Beaufort.
“The entire focus is mental health, to make sure clinicians understand the trauma that firefighter-paramedics deal with daily,” said Stewart. “You can take a virtual mental health class that teaches you this, but this is a hands-on experience and we are being told this the first of its kind.”
Stewart said SC FAST will host another hands-on training event in 2023.
