
|
This article has been reviewed for accuracy by our peer review team which includes clinicians and medical professionals. Learn more about our peer review process.
They are the first to respond to any crisis, disaster, or emergency. When COVID-19 struck, they still were first on the scene and have continued to show up—because that’s their job. These “first responders” are America’s heroes.
Watch any Marvel movie, though, and you’ll soon discover that being a hero has its drawbacks. One big one is burnout. First responder burnout is unique: It has its own distinguishing characteristics and can require a different set of preventative and self-care measures as well as treatment responses.
To better understand this distinctive phenomenon and its impact on first responders and their families, we turned to Dr. Sachi Ananda, Ph.D. As the director of a specialized addiction and mental health treatment program for first responders, Dr. Ananda is intimately familiar with first responder burnout and how to recognize, prevent, manage, and ultimately overcome it.
What follow are highlights from the interview, which might just be a source of hope and support for first responders and their loved ones—not just during a pandemic but at any time.
What Is First Responder Burnout? Signs of Burnout
Burnout that goes unrecognized can follow a trajectory leading to drug and alcohol addiction and other mental health conditions. In fact, “If you don’t address the burnout, it will probably lead to more severe symptoms that could become a nervous breakdown,” Dr. Ananda said.
Knowing how to recognize burnout is therefore imperative, but what is first responder burnout and what does it look like? Dr. Sachi described it as follows:
- “Feeling very exhausted and overwhelmed”—because “first responders are working under much more stressful conditions than the average person, and every day is a lot more intense”—and feeling this extreme fatigue “more over a few days than just a bad night or bad call”
- “If there are certain functions on your job that you normally do and now can’t” because “you’re more overwhelmed than usual”
- “Complacency or lack of care about your job”
- “Reduced empathy for the people you’re trying to help”
- “Compassion fatigue”
What Causes Compassion Fatigue in First Responders?
In the last case, a big cause of compassion fatigue in first responders is “secondary trauma,” according to Dr. Ananda. Secondary trauma occurs from experiencing and observing a traumatic event that is happening or has happened to someone else.
Here’s how Dr. Ananda explained it: “It’s when you may not have witnessed or experienced the trauma yourself, but because you help people so much, you almost take on the trauma and stress that they have.”
“Burnout happens on the same continuum with compassion fatigue,” Dr. Ananda said. She added that this continuum keeps going, “from burnout to compassion fatigue to PTSD—although more clinical PTSD is when you’re experiencing certain symptoms, like intrusive thoughts, memories, flashbacks, or doing things to avoid reminding you about the trauma.”