RICHMOND, Ky. (LEX 18) — Every job comes with its own form of stress, and for dispatchers, that comes in the form of taking call after call and dealing with life-or-death situations.
So, we talked with a dispatcher to find out more about the mental health challenges they face and how they are able to find relief.
Day shift supervisor and dispatcher at the Madison County Emergency Operations Center Megan Riley helps people navigate emergencies over the phone. However, Riley can't just focus on one call.
"We do not have time to pause and process the calls we've just taken. You may take a cardiac arrest call, or someone may have passed away. You immediately end that call, and the phone rings again," Riley said.
Dealing with call after call like this, the stress can really add up.
"I thought I was handling it well. I thought I was processing a lot of things well. I kinda shoved it to the back of my mind. Try not to think about it and try to focus on other things. As the years have progressed. I have done this for approximately eight years. It tends to build up," Riley adds.
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One method that is working to help dispatchers in Kentucky deal with these challenges is the post-critical incident seminar. This event is a three-day conference in which first responders can come together and share their experiences.
Mike Bosse, the Deputy Commissioner of the Department of Criminal Justice Training says, "Post Critical Incident Seminars are one of our most important things." He adds, "You have people that have experienced, maybe for the first time in a long time, a sense of relief from what's been burdening them."
After attending a seminar, Riley realized how she was carrying stress. "It opened my eyes to a lot of the stress that we were carrying, how I was processing and not processing correctly."
Bosse has been a police officer for more than 40 years and speaks very highly of dispatchers saying, "These are our warriors, our tough guys, the men and women who go out and deal with the tragedies that we take for granted. We take for granted when that there will be an ambulance, a fireman arrives, or a police officer arrives. They only arrive because our dispatchers got the original information in the first place and the appropriately sent the right people to that emergency. It's very much our responsibility to take care of those people."
According to the National Alliance of Mental Illness, between 18 and 24 percent of dispatchers have dealt with PTSD, and Riley believes that the seminars provide a safe place for not only dispatchers to gather but for all first responders.
