Dispatchers ask for help dealing with PTSD, seek ‘first responder’ designation

      The state’s 911 dispatchers are urging lawmakers to add them to the state’s legal definition of “first responders,” before the legislative session ends.  Some of them visited the Capitol to share personal stories illustrating why they need the help in dealing with post-traumatic stress that comes with that designation.

      First responders – which state statute currently defines as firefighters, law enforcement personnel, and emergency medical personnel – are afforded mental health resources, and several legislators say those should also be available to dispatchers.   

      Representative Lane Roberts (R-Joplin) has been Joplin’s Police Chief and the state’s Director of Public Safety, among other things in his career of more than 40 years.  Throughout all of that time he worked with dispatchers and even worked as one at times.

      “We have always underappreciated these folks.  They’re kind of out of sight, out of mind.  They work in a windowless environment, but they are the first of the first responders.  They’re the gateway to public safety,” said Roberts.  “Every time they get an emergency call they get an adrenaline dump just like people who work in the field do.  The difference is, the people in the field get to go somewhere, take action, use those chemicals, while the dispatcher will simply move on to the next call, take those chemicals home at night and go to sleep with them and suffer the health consequences.”

      Independence representative Robert Sauls (D) was a prosecutor in Jackson County and a public defender.

“As a former prosecutor I would regularly listen to 911 calls and what happens in those circumstances and … often times people are contacting 911 operators on their worst day.  Something’s happening, they’re scared, it’s a very stressful situation, and all of these 911 operators are under these stressful environments and the thing of it is, you’ve got to go on to the next one.  You’ve gotten your one situation settled, you hang up the phone, and you’ve got another one.  I think it’s very important to recognize these people as first responders.”

      Polk County 911 Director Sarah Newell said what she and her colleagues do is often dismissed as just answering phones or clerical work.

“It’s not.  We are the first point, so how that call goes is dependent on that dispatcher.  How fast that call gets put out, what information gets put out, resource allocation and knowing and forward thinking to say, ‘they’re probably going to need an ambulance on standby so let’s go ahead and roll one of those,’ so all things that they have to think about out of the box at any given time.”

      J.R. Webb, the Assistant Director of Springfield/Green County 911, said dispatchers, “have to be able to do a lot of things at once.  They have to be able to take that phone call, at the same time they’re typing that information into a computer, at the same time that they may be dealing with first responders on the radio.  The multitasking is incredible in a busy situation, and it takes a special kind of person to be able to do that.  It takes a kind of type ‘A,’ take charge personality to succeed at our job and it’s not meant for everybody.”

      The Chair of the State 911 Board of Governance, Alan Wells, said “Post-traumatic stress is a big, big thing for our 911 telecommunicators, and as of right now they do not have a lot of resources there to help with that.”

“Turnover is a big problem, burnout is a big problem that affects this industry, so we hope to be able to give them all the benefits necessary to sustain a good, long-lasting career,” said Wells.

      He said it’s not uncommon for dispatchers, especially in the smaller communities throughout Missouri, to know personally the people involved in the incidents they are handling.

      “Sometimes it can be very horrifying for those operators,” said Wells.  “It may be a loved one, a family member, an immediate family member, or in our case it was one of our own 911 call takers who had just left his shift, headed home on his motorcycle and hit a deer and it was a fatality.  The same operators that were just working with him had to take that call and work that incident.”

      Hailey Brunner is in her fourth year as a dispatcher at the Cass Co Sheriff’s Office.  She remembered one week in which her rotation, “worked seven fatalities, whether it be between an accident, people harming themselves, anything of that nature, natural deaths, anything, and it’s just a wide variety, whether it’s young kids to old kids.  My most recent one was a two year-old who died in a fatality car accident.”

      Blake Johnson has been dispatching for five years in Green County.  He said there is one call he’ll always remember. 

“I had taken a call from a family who had lost a child and I can still hear the mom screaming for her kid.  It’s absolutely horrible and it makes it worse when you actually know who those people are.”

      Newell said, “I have a dispatcher who actually worked a motor vehicle accident.  It was a rollover with ejection.  There were four juveniles in the vehicle.  She took the call and … right before she was ready to dispatch, she realized it was her son in the vehicle.”

      Brunner said dispatchers can’t help but imagine the scenes that they are hearing play out over the phone, and that can result in very vivid and very upsetting imagery. 

“You’re hearing all of this stuff that’s going on, on the phone.  You’re hearing the screams and … they’re painting a picture for you, so you have this picture in your mind of what it looks like and it could be completely the opposite of what they actually see on the scene.  It could be better, it could be worse.  We never quite know.”

      Webb said worse still, dispatchers often get no closure at the end of a call.

“You’re sending folks to help these people that are yelling and screaming at you and in their worst day, then you don’t really know for sure when the other first responders go there, and how this call turned out,” said Webb.

      He said an increasing number of suicides in Missouri also directly impacts dispatchers. 

“It could be someone, honestly, wanting an audience while they commit suicide.  That happens way too much.”

      Some call centers, like that at Springfield, have mental health resources that are made available to dispatchers there and in surrounding communities.  Such resources aren’t available to all dispatchers in Missouri, though, especially in many smaller communities. 

      Several bills would address PTSD and mental health resources for dispatchers and other first responders.  These dispatchers and lawmakers are among those who hope at least one of those bills is passed before the session’s end on May 12.