Giving Compass' Take:

• The author points out how first responders who experience the mass tragedies often go through bouts of depression, anxiety, job burnout, and even suicide. 

• Are there organizations or counselors that specialize in helping first responders deal with post-traumatic stress? Can they create their own networks to create safe spaces for each other to talk about it?

• Read about the importance of having more female surge staff working in disaster response. 


The day a gunman fired into a crowd of 22,000 people at the country music festival in Las Vegas, hospital nursing supervisor Antoinette Mullan was focused on one thing: saving lives.

She recalls dead bodies on gurneys across the triage floor, a trauma bay full of victims. But “in that moment, we’re not aware of anything else but taking care of what’s in front of us,” Mullan said.

Proud as she was of the work her team did, she calls it “the most horrific evening of my life” — the culmination of years of searing experiences she has tried to work through, mostly on her own.

“I can tell you that after 30 years, I still have emotional breakdowns and I never know when it’s going to hit me,” said Mullan.

Many of the men and women who respond to these tragedies have become heroes and victims at once. Some firefighters, emergency medical providers, law enforcement officers and others say the scale, sadness and sometimes sheer gruesomeness of their experiences haunt them, leading to tearfulness and depression, job burnout, substance abuse, relationship problems, even suicide. Many, like Mullan, are stoic, forgoing counseling even when it is offered.

The “first responders” who provide emergency aid have been hit hard not just by recent large-scale disasters but by the accumulation of stress and trauma over many years, research shows. Many studies have found elevated rates of post-traumatic stress disorder among nurses, firefighters and paramedics.

Read the full article about first responders' trauma by Heidi de Marco at Governing Magazine