Photos by Jim MacMillan, Philadelphia Daily News

 

"The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing."

John Powell

 

If you develop Post Traumatic Stress Disorder/Job Related Trauma, you may find that problems and symptoms appear immediately following a traumatic incident or these symptoms may appear weeks or months after a traumatic incident.  Symptoms can also be cumulative, in that they slowly increase in intensity as each additional job-related traumatic incident is experienced.

 

Although each individual may experience PTSD differently, the following are the most commonly reported symptoms and descriptions from individuals describing them:

 

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Photos by Jim MacMillan, Philadelphia Daily News.

"One of the fundamental principles of real service is taught many times a day aboard every airplane in the United States.  It is the part just before takeoff when the attendant says, 'If the cabin loses pressure, the oxygen masks will fall from above.  Put the mask on first before you try to help the person next to you'."

Rachel Remen, M.D.; My Grandfather's Blessings

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"Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. Security does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than exposure."

Helen Keller

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Photos by Jim MacMillan, Philadelphia Daily News

 

"The only thing necessary for evil to triumph
is for good men to do nothing."

Edmund Burke

 

In the United States, there are over 17,000 separate law enforcement agencies with 740,000 sworn officers serving in varying roles.  There is an average of 165 line-of duty deaths each year.  In 2006, 145 officers died in the line of duty; 60 of these officers were feloniously slain.  Law enforcement officers average 56,292 assaults and 16,138 injuries per year.  (National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, Inc., 2007; Uniform Crime Reports, 2006).

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"Many people have the wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not obtained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose."

Hellen Keller

There are approximately 266,300 professional (paid) fire fighters in the U.S. and 815,500 volunteers, and the number of volunteers is declining.  Fire fighters and paramedics1 are continually exposed to high levels of job-related trauma.  In 2001, 438 fire fighters and paramedics died on the scene of fire incidents (344 responding to the attack of the World Trade Center on 9-11).  Of those who died, 83% were professional fire fighters, 71 deaths were of volunteers, part-time or wild land fire fighters.  In 2005 there were 115 line-of-duty deaths and 41, 950 injuries.  Surprisingly, in the past 20 years, heart attacks have accounted for about 50% of on-the-job fire fighter fatalities.  Motor vehicle crashes have accounted for about 21% of deaths; gunshot wounds for 5.3% (www.usfa.dhs.gov/fireservice/fatalities/statistics/casualties.shtm.; Fire Headquarters; 2002)

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Photos by Jim Macmillan, Philadelphia Daily News. The photo to the right is an award winning picture of dawn breaking over the ruins of the World Trade Center on 9/12/01.

 

"Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear."

Ambrose Redmoon

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"You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you stop to look fear in the face; when you do the thing you think you cannot do."

Eleanor Roosevelt

 

Combat Veterans Although the Vietnam War began in 1961 and ended in 1975, hundreds of Vietnam combat veterans continue to experience flashbacks and other PTSD symptoms.   Ten to twenty percent of soldiers exposed to combat in Iraq and Afghanistan are predicted to experience PTSD symptoms (Boal; 2007).

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“The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing”

John Powell

 

Example One: Male Law Enforcement Officer -
Job-Related Trauma; Single Incident:

A wife’s perspective of her husband’s behavior after he had been through a critical incident at work where four people died:  He thought he would die.  His partner almost died - he had to rescue her - and a high official accused him of being responsible for two of the deaths, although he later received an apology.  The traumatizing event happened in early 1997.  The husband was a National Academy student (law enforcement officers attending three months of training at the FBI Academy). The wife was interviewed in the fall of 1999, when she visited him at the Academy, and was asked about husband’s symptoms.  Shortly before this interview, he had received MTP Level Four treatment for his trauma.  The treatment eliminated these symptoms in two sessions. The couple had been married eleven years and has given permission to use this information.

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