mental health Posts

Personally, I’ve wondered if my whole personality has been built around masking. That sounds dramatic. It may be a little dramatic. It is also not entirely a joke. Because the more I learn about ADHD, especially the parts that never made it onto…

A Quality of Life Checklist for Measuring More Than Crisis Most of the questions we ask about first responder mental health are designed to find out how bad things have become. Are you depressed? Are you drinking too much? Are you having nightmare…

“You knew what you signed up for.” Maybe. You knew the job could be dangerous. You knew you might see people die. You knew there would be long shifts, missed holidays, difficult calls, public scrutiny, and decisions that had to be made before your…

Season 3 Wrap Up and Time to Write & Rest I am taking a summer sabbatical from After the Tones Drop. There. I said it. And because I know how people’s brains work, especially in this community, let me say the next part clearly: nothing terrible h…

Who Protects First Responders When the Culture Fails Them? There are some conversations that feel less like an interview and more like someone handing you a historical record with burn marks on it. This episode with Ron Clark is one of those…

There is a gap in how we prepare first responders. We train them to breach doors. We train them to move toward gunfire. We train them to stack up, clear rooms, make entry, neutralize threats, render aid, and keep moving when everyone else is ru…

When Depression Comes Back The worst part of depression is not always the depression. Sometimes it's the thought that comes with it. The one that tells you this is always going to happen, no matter what you do. The one that says all your work must…

There are some losses that split your life in half. Before this. After this. Rick Cheatham has lived through more than one of those dividing lines. He has walked through addiction, financial devastation, the murder of his son, and a catastrophic i…

First responder silence is often misunderstood. They think if someone is not talking, it means they are in denial. Or prideful. Or too stubborn to admit they are struggling. Sometimes that is true. But a lot of the time, silence is not about ego. I…

It’s Not Just the Calls... There is a version of the first responder mental health conversation that is easy to understand, easy to repeat, and incomplete. It usually sounds like this: somebody saw something awful, it wrecked them, and now they ar…

Firefighters are meticulous about maintenance. They check the rig. They inspect the tools. The service the air packs. They know that if something fails on scene because nobody bothered to maintain it, the consequences can be immediate and brutal. T…