Episode 28: First Responder Mental Health with Dr. I. David Daniels, Part One

00;00;09;00 – 00;02;36;05
Rick Hoaglund
If you are a first responder, whether you’re in the fire service, police, corrections, health care or another field, you’re in a special group. You probably joined to help people. You’re in an admired profession, but you’re also in a profession that faces safety risk. Safety in a broader sense includes both mental and physical risks. Compared to the general public, first responders face an increased risk of distress, worry, sleep issues, difficulties in concentrating adverse effects on personal relationships, increases in substance abuse and depression. Depression and PTSD can be five times higher than in the general population. A 2010 study reported that PTSD affects between 15% and 30% of all first responders. For physical injuries, first responders, particularly firefighters and police officers, have higher rates of occupational injuries and fatalities compared to any other profession. For instance, in the United States, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that in 2020, firefighters had a nonfatal injury rate of 15.5 per 100 full time workers. Police officers had a rate of 14.3 per 100 full time workers. These rates are higher than the national average for all occupations. To understand this high rate of mental distress and physical safety and how they’re related, we’re speaking with Dr. I. David Daniels. Dr. Daniels is a life member of the International Association of Fire Chiefs and served over 30 years in Fire Rescue Emergency medical and emergency management organizations in three states. His career focus on safety was a primary reason that he was inducted into the National Fire Heritage Center’s Hall of Legacies, Legends, and Leaders Class of 2021, the first living African-American to have received this honor. Dr. Daniels served two terms as a member of the National Safety Council Board of Directors and was the founding chair of the National Safety Council’s Government and Public Sector Division. He received the organization’s highest honor, the Distinguished Service to Safety Award. Dr. Daniels also hosts the Psych Health and Safety USA podcast. Welcome, Dr. Daniels!

00;02;36;07 – 00;02;38;01
Dr. I. David Daniels
Good to be here! Thanks for having me.

00;02;38;04 – 00;02;46;00
Rick Hoaglund
First of all, let’s just talk about your background so that people have an idea of of who we’re talking to. Who is Dr. Daniels?

00;02;46;03 – 00;05;18;00
Dr. I. David Daniels
(Laughs) That’s interesting that you would ask me that question! That’s exactly what I asked people. And when they talk to me. So if I would is to describe I. David Daniels, I would describe him as the the proud product of a teenage mom who was 14 years old when he was born that figured out that birth by a teenager is not a sentence to be mediocre and to have a horrible life. I would describe him as someone who has figured out how to get the best out of life, how to enjoy his surroundings, using this kind of back and forth between the third person and first person. But I’m a native of Seattle, Washington! Born and raised there. That’s actually where I got my first responder… a kind of foundation, if you will, was with the Seattle Fire Department for 20 years. Got to do just about everything that and in many cases, things that other folks didn’t want to do! I was in 28 different spots over the 20 years I was there to include responding to the Oklahoma City bombing and a couple of hurricanes and a couple of earthquakes as a member of Urban Search and Rescue Task Force. But the thing that I was really most interested in was safety. We’ll talk more about that later as my active fire service career kind of ended. Now I’ll talk we might talk a little bit about how that happened, but I get really more focused on the fact that it was really probably a safety professional more than I was a firefighter the entire time I was in. Part of that was driven by the fact that 30 people over the course of my primarily first responder career, 30, three-zero, people that I work with, either got killed at work or died from something they were exposed to at work and I didn’t think that that was normal. I didn’t think that that’s the way it should be. And so I’ve dedicated my second career, if you will, was really was the same one to occupational health and safety. So my doctorate is an occupational health and safety, master’s in H.R., and I attempt to right now help organizations keep their folks both psychologically, physically safe.

00;05;18;03 – 00;05;34;00
Rick Hoaglund
That is great. And you said it was from your personal experience that drove you there. Like you said, you always had an interest in it, but the real driving force was that you had- you experienced things that you wouldn’t experience sometimes in other professions. Am I correct on that?

00;05;34;03 – 00;07;28;23
Dr. I. David Daniels
That’s absolutely correct! I started in the fire rescue service a couple of years out of high school, and I’d never seen a dead person. I’ve never seen a person die. I’d only seen a couple of dead people, period, in my entire life! And while they did a really adequate job talking about going to buildings on fire and, you know, rescuing people out of cars and stuff like that, there wasn’t as much conversation about how it was going to feel emotionally. Matter of fact, it was virtually no, there was this you know, you’ve got to just suck it up and deal with it type attitude, which again, as I’ve had more birthdays and understand the concept a little deeper, that’s the tool that they had to work with at the time. Most of them were traumatized by something they experienced either as Vietnam veterans or or what have you. So they didn’t have a lot in their toolbox. And so I saw my first human being die in front of me. I was 21 years old. I did a job for three weeks and I witnessed my first colleague dying on the job. I’ve been on the job for eight months and so and I continued to happen. And it got closer and closer and closer to me to include When I was on the job for about six years, I was an individual who rode to work, you know, the same way I did. Got in the fire truck the same way I did. We went to a fire together and I came back and he didn’t. So and that’s on that day. I actually thought about quitting. Really did. As I think about every time I think about, you know, that incident on July 12, 1987, I think about how I felt and I almost just gave it up. And for some reason I stuck with it. And it was, you know, it was the decision that was destined to be made by me because it contributed a lot to who I am today.

00;07;28;25 – 00;07;36;19
Rick Hoaglund
Tell me, what drove you to do this life as a first responder in the fire service? What was it that drove you there to begin with?

00;07;36;21 – 00;08;08;28
Dr. I. David Daniels
I was tired of standing outside in Seattle getting wet, doing construction. That was it! I didn’t have any relatives. As a matter of fact, I never met a firefighter. I didn’t I didn’t have any friends who were firefighters. I didn’t know anything about it at all. And one of my colleagues said he was going to go take the firefighter test and asked me to go with him. So I did. Matter of fact, interestingly, we both went to take this test. I passed the test. He failed it. The rest is history! But that was you know, it turned out to be it changed the course of my life.

00;08;09;01 – 00;08;23;04
Rick Hoaglund
So when you’re giving this sort of talk with with others, are you promoting a service type of job or do you say, hey, service jobs come with with caution?

00;08;23;06 – 00;11;35;10
Dr. I. David Daniels
I don’t tend- to I try not to give advice to anybody. What I try to do is have people think about what it is that they want and whether or not pursuing this course to get it will work for you or not, because everything’s- nothing is for everybody. There isn’t anything that’s for everybody! And these, you know, sometimes even nonsensical conversations we have about we just had to make this open for everybody. You can’t make everything open for everybody. It’s just not possible! You can’t design any situation, any circumstance, any organization or company or you can’t make it for everybody. It’s got to meet a need for a particular group of people, and sometimes we’re not really honest about who it’s for. So so we say it’s for everybody, but it was designed for a particular person. The only thing that could be for me has to be designed with me in mind. And, you know, that was one of the interesting aspects of being the fire rescue service. It was not designed for me. It wasn’t! It wasn’t- I had to kind of work my way into, but it wasn’t designed for me. And so there are parts of it that were very difficult because it wasn’t designed for me. But on the other hand, I was able to figure it out. So again, in terms of what people do, whether or not they should or should not serve, I’m really about one thing and one thing only, which is what is good for me? Because often, people don’t do good for others because they really have to figure out what’s good for them! And they spend all their time trying to tell everybody else, Here’s what you should do, here’s what your life should be like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But they never really figure it out for themselves. What’s what’s important to you? What works for you? What gives you joy and peace and contentment and what works for you? Once you can figure that out, then you can line up whatever this system is, whatever this company is, whatever this deployment is, whatever you can line that up with what already works for you, because often because we don’t know that ourself, we- somebody tells us to go do it. We go do it. We don’t really like it, but we keep doing it now because we’re pressured, because we decide to do it and we- so we go out, and I heard this once we go out and buy things that we don’t need to impress people we don’t even like because again, we haven’t looked in the mirror and figured out what’s good for us. And I’ve I’ve had a- I got introduced to myself at about 26 years old. I met me, and the guy was already in the fire service at the time, but I met me and I started this. I made some decisions that were important for me. They worked for me. They- and I’m now in the sort of the place and stage in life where everything I do for me is perfect. Everything is perfect because it just doesn’t work for everybody else that way. So but for me, it’s perfect because if it weren’t, I wouldn’t do it. It works for me. I do the things that I enjoyed that worked for me when I do them. But again, they don’t necessarily work for everybody. And so- so I’m, I’m really cautious when people ask me about advice. So what is it that you want? And service to your community might be a way to do that, but it also can be quite frustrating at the same time!

00;11;35;12 – 00;11;43;07
Rick Hoaglund
I was just going to ask that! So, you know, it’s a very respected position when you’re a first responder, no matter which first responder position you’re in-

00;11;43;11 – 00;11;43;26
Dr. I. David Daniels
By- by some!

00;11;44;03 – 00;11;45;25
Rick Hoaglund
I respect you! I’m uust letting you know!

00;11;46;02 – 00;11;48;02
Dr. I. David Daniels
Hey, thanks!

00;11;48;05 – 00;12;18;22
Rick Hoaglund
So, you know, it’s generally something that the community likes, generally, you know, and- but that comes with a lot of… I would call it pressure. Pressure at work, and you were talking about, you know, you- you sort of had to fit their mold, at least in the beginning, right? That’s right. And so what what makes that special? Like, that’s that that sounds special to me in a first responder role compared to other roles in other businesses. It’s different than a banker or something.

00;12;18;25 – 00;15;15;17
Dr. I. David Daniels
Yes. Yes. But but but again, a lot of that is it is what we’ve seen and heard and been exposed to. These are the stories that we tell ourselves about being a firefighter, being a police officer, and being- And they all sound great from outside looking in! And some parts of them are, but some parts of them are not. And again, I just try to take that kind of balanced view of everything because, again, I didn’t know what firefighters did. I just knew the part that I knew was that they didn’t get laid off all that often which seemed pretty stable. That that was it at the time, I, you know, I wanted to do something that was kind of stable. And then I had the opportunity for growth. I got my first job when I was 11, throwing newspapers, and had been told and I’ve worked most- I’ve worked most of my life since, you know, the very few periods of my life where I didn’t have a job someplace. But the thing that I found myself really interested in was being in charge of things, because I- I’m very creative. I have lots of ideas. And I find that when you’re not in a position of leadership, you- you don’t get an opportunity to exercise those ideas, so that was really what it was about. I wanted to try new stuff and do things different, but I couldn’t do it because it wasn’t a position of leadership, but I couldn’t get the leadership because I was too young. So I was told, you’re too- you’re too young. And even when I started in the fire rescue service, I heard this incessant discussion about, well, you got to be around, you got to have experience, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So somehow to suggest that experience and competence are the same thing was there or not. But anyway, I’m of the- of the belief that once you, again, once you get centered on what’s important to you and once you figure out that that a particular environment will give that to you, then you should- you should give it your jolly best to get as much out of it as possible. But in order to do that, you got to- you got to survive it, you know, to simply dive in and go again. When I started in the fire rescue services back in the day when they would- there was this expectation that I was going to give my life for other people, and I think I might have bought into that for a very short period of time. And I finally figured out that that’s not my job to get killed for other people. My job is to help people who want and accept my help, but not to go out- because it doesn’t help them if I get killed on the way, if I get injured on the way, if I turn the fire truck over on the way to a call, that doesn’t help the people who called 911! So it was, you know, really important. And again, seeing, you know, people injured and killed so early in my career, I figured out, look, I got to survive this thing. And eventually I also figured out that I had to survive emotionally. I’ve never been injured, never had surgery. Matter of fact, I hadn’t been in the hospital since I was five, four or five years old when I had a hernia surgery. So I barely remembered. That’s what my mom tells me. So I’ve never gotten hurt. Never. Not a single solitary time.

00;15;15;20 – 00;15;22;23
Rick Hoaglund
So where do you drive that? I mean, what do you say drove you to not be hurt or not even mentally or physically or- or whatever?

00;15;22;23 – 00;15;27;13
Dr. I. David Daniels
Well, again, I said I didn’t get hurt physically.

00;15;27;15 – 00;15;32;22
Rick Hoaglund
Oh! So tell me about the mental strain. And- and you don’t have to go into anything too personal, just so you know.

00;15;32;22 – 00;18;27;07
Dr. I. David Daniels
Oh trust me, I can go. I can go real deep! I- so one of the issues that I had to deal with in the fire rescue service is the fact that it is the least ever publicly funded thing we do in this country. The American Fire Rescue Service was built for and by white men. It was! And some of them are you know, they’re really good at it, but that’s who it was built for. And so when I showed up as a person who’s not a white male, so I’m male, but I’m not white, I had some issues to deal with to include things like, well, the only reason he’s here is because they had an affirmative action program. That’s how he got in. And the truth of the matter is, when I took the test for the Seattle Fire Department back, you know, back in the day, about 3000 people tested. And, you know, I got into the recruit class because I was on the affirmative action list. So I got into a class of 32 people. 28 of us finished. I was the second person to make lieutenant, the second to make captain and the first to make the talley chief and everything pass it. So it’s obvious that I had the capacity and the potential to be able to do it. But again, the system itself was not designed with me in mind because people like me weren’t in the room. The first black firefighter hired to the City of Seattle was in 1959. He was on the job seven or eight years by himself as the only one. And again, this is just what was going on at the time. I’m not suggesting that all these horrible people, but is what was going on at the time. We- the first female firefighter, was not hired until 1977. And so the system was not designed for people of color and for women. It just was not! And that created an additional psychological kind of thing that you had to deal with, which is, you know, these guys are looking at me funny. And some of it even got into my own head! So I found myself trying to prove myself all the time to people after I was working harder than they were, I was more capable than they were, but I felt like I had to prove myself until I met myself and were like, Hold up, hold up. I finally figured that I don’t have anything to prove to these people! And that now that actually took much longer to really, really start to believe them. I start telling myself, I’m doing this because they say that I have to take a test. I’ll take the test. If you say I have to do this, I’ll do it. You know, whatever you can do, I could do because I had enough confidence to believe that I was just as capable as everyone else was. But- so I talked about the difference between the physical and the emotional piece. I believe that people get physically injured on their jobs because they are first emotionally injured on the job. No physical harm comes to a person that does not first- is not first psychosocially harmed.

00;18;27;09 – 00;18;30;24
Rick Hoaglund
Okay. Tell me what you what your definition of psychosocially means.

00;18;30;24 – 00;19;39;04
Dr. I. David Daniels
So, so what- psycho is how you think, social is how you act. And when I talk about that, when I use that word, I talk about it in the context of psychosocial hazards. As a matter of fact, in my research, the title of my dissertation was The lived Experience of Black Workers Exposure to Psychosocial Hazards in the American Workplace. I picked a group that I understood already rather than trying to, you know, and- but I picked a topic that I didn’t I didn’t know that much about psychosocial hazards. What I knew is that I had the experience personally of being bullied, mistreated, disrespected, you know, looked down upon, talked about in front of my face and behind my back and experienced having all these emotional things going on. And so I wanted to learn more about that. And what I came to understand is a psychosocial hazard is a psychosocial factor that’s perceived or experienced by the person exposed as a threat that in turn affects their behavior.

00;19;39;06 – 00;19;49;21
Rick Hoaglund
So you’re saying you’ve cited and it’s individual. So it your reaction to that event is different than if I were in a similar situation, my reaction could be completely different than yours could, right?

00;19;49;27 – 00;22;14;16
Dr. I. David Daniels
Totally and absolutely! And this is so again, when I have this conversation in the Occupational Safety and Health arena, when people talk about mental health and all these different types of things, even in the public safety space, they get really kind of nervous when I mention that and so that again, that definition is from my research and it’s- I looked, I found about ten or 12 others in places around the world, but they tended to describe what they thought a psychosocial hazard was, but not really define it. So the give me an example, say this is what it is, but okay, but I don’t see it that way. And from my perspective, I believe and again, my research suggested that it is unique to the individual. What do I perceive or experience? And if that experience or perception is a threat to me, what happens is my amygdala fires up and it says threat, threat, threat, threat, threat. My prefrontal cortex kind of shuts down and says, hold up, let’s look. We can’t have a reasonable, you know, highbrow type of conversation until we clear the threat of the way. And in the workplace that often gets forgotten because again, this circumstance wasn’t built for me. I’m not saying it’s intentional. I’m not saying that everybody I worked with was intentionally mean to me. They weren’t. But when they did these things that they called hazing, where they would put water over my locker and when I opened up the locker the water would fall on me, or short sheet me, which means they go and mess with your bed. You have to get in this bed in the middle of the night. Sometimes the lights are off. You try to get in, you can’t get in. And then you try to wonder what’s going on! Or they do other kinds of, you know, in some cases, even worse kinds of things. They thought that was funny and that’s what they had to experience, well that’s what they experienced, but I didn’t like it! They told me when I went to my first fire station that I had to go down to the basement. They set up a desk and a chair in the basement of the fire station. They said, That’s where you hang out because you’re a recruit firefighter and you’ve got to do a bunch of study. So I, I did it. But as I got my time in, so to speak, after about six or eight months, they wanted me to come out of the basement. I didn’t want to because I didn’t like that. Nobody ever asked me how I felt about that. They just sent me down there and said, That’s where we have to stay. So I did stay there and I studied and my studying was to get me out of that fire station because I didn’t like the environment.

00;22;14;19 – 00;22;23;23
Rick Hoaglund
We’re really talking a lot about culture and is this- is this sorts of things prevalent across all types of first responder initiation, the…?

00;22;23;23 – 00;24;53;28
Dr. I. David Daniels
I will say that this is prevalent across all kinds of occupations. They just take different forms. So- so again, people so when we get together as human beings, we often do things to create a what we believe to be a safer environment for us. So because it works for me, because I talk this way, I eat particular foods, I wear particular clothes, I you know, observe particular faith traditions because it’s safe for me, then to keep it that way, I try to make you do the same thing because it’s safe for me. The problem is I don’t ask you what is also safe for you. I tell you to conform. I tell you to be like the rest of us. You have to do it this way. Here’s our orientation so you can do it the way we do it. And and some of that is necessary, but it’s only necessary to the extent we’re both doing it, because often only one side does it. So the power, the the power group, whoever the power group is, the tall people, the able bodied people, the male, the straight people, the whoever, whoever the dominant group is, they create a safe space for themselves. But they either intentionally or unintentionally create an unsafe space for folks who are not like them. And so this is where the conversation about diversity, equity and inclusion comes in. So I find it really interesting to hear people talking about this. And this is, again, in all spaces, not just the public safety space. It’s also where there’s this talk about how if we want to be open, well, you haven’t created a safe space for the people that you say you want. And that’s what the the the fire rescue service did, again, in some cases unintentionally, because it was their beliefs. You had to carry heavy ladders and you had to do a bunch of things that were. Why? That’s because men came up with the ideas! There weren’t women in the room when that question was asked or when that that program was designed, because they would have told you something different. And it’s not that what you did was wrong, it’s that what they are doing is different. It doesn’t make you a bad person! It just says that your way and my way may be different. So how do we come up with a way for us to both feel safe doing this work? Because if we don’t feel safe doing this work with each other, how are we possibly going to go out and take care of the general public?

00;24;54;01 – 00;25;00;26
Rick Hoaglund
So- so tell me, is it they didn’t also recognize your past experience coming in?

00;25;00;28 – 00;25;01;24
Dr. I. David Daniels
They didn’t ask!

00;25;01;24 – 00;25;12;25
Rick Hoaglund
What are your triggers? You know, what is your past about it? It, is that- and I know we’re going to get really into this in a minute, but is that changing at all, do you believe?

00;25;12;27 – 00;26;38;09
Dr. I. David Daniels
I believe in- I believe it’s changing a bit! I believe it’s changing a bit. I believe it’s changing in other places around the world faster because they have regulations that are requiring it. But in the U.S., we don’t really have regulations that require, particularly the workplace, we don’t have regulations that require employers to see psychosocial hazards and physical hazards as the same thing. So we bifurcate them, we say that they’re different, and we we take people’s minds and bodies and we separate them. We say, well, your mind is over here and your body’s over there, and when your body gets hurt, now we’re interested, but we’re not really interested until that shows up. And what they don’t understand is if you were to focus more on how people felt about things, you would have less of the physical manifestations. People who have fires at their houses, often it’s because of how they feel about things, that the decisions that they make are how they feel. They feel cold. So in order to get that feeling addressed, they do things to warm their- the places where they are, and the only tools that they have is a match in a pile of wood. So that’s what they used because they felt cold. So those feelings aren’t addressed, and then we wait until, oh boy, but they burned their house down! Well, we could have addressed that earlier on if we’re interested in how people felt.

00;26;38;12 – 00;26;52;08
Rick Hoaglund
So using your example just now, we should be catching people when we see that they’re reacting to something in a way that may be different than what you perceive to be- normal is a bad word, but average? Average!

00;26;52;12 – 00;28;36;11
Dr. I. David Daniels
Well, so- so again, we you and I, so you don’t do- and I’ll say this, I, I didn’t create this concept that- I read a book a while back called the- I’m forgetting the name of the book here at the moment, but it was actually written by Stephen Covey, the Seven Habits guy, his son. And the book – the book is called Trust and Inspire. In the book, Mr. Covey talks about the fact that the world has changed, people have changed, the environment, everything’s changed, but we tend to use the same kinds of solutions to the problems that we used to use. But they don’t work anymore. They work then, but they don’t work now, because if you continue to do the same thing, eventually you’re just backing up because the work continues to change. And so, you know, one of the concepts that you mentioned in the book that I’ve now extrapolated into safety is you don’t do safety to people. You don’t do safety for people either. You do safety with people. It’s not going to be safe if you do it to me. It’s also not going to be safe for me, because if you do it for me then I don’t learn anything. You have to do safety with me, which means we have to have a conversation. We have to communicate with each other about what is safe for us. First of all, why are we here in the first place? What are we here to do? Why? Why are we here? What’s the point? What goal are we trying to achieve? Once we decide what we are trying to achieve, then I can decide what my role is in what we both decided. But I have to know why we’re here! What’s the point?

00;28;36;14 – 00;28;45;09
Rick Hoaglund
And- And safety you’re using as a very inclusive physical, mental? Yes! And all of that! Yeah!

00;28;45;09 – 00;29;29;16
Dr. I. David Daniels
All of that. All of them. Yes. You- If you don’t feel safe, you won’t be safe. Period. People make decisions all the time about the communities that they live in based on how they feel. They’ve never been robbed! There’s nothing bad really ever happened to it, but they feel that they’re unsafe. They will sell their house, they will put bars on their windows, do all these things because of how they feel. And those feelings are influenced by all kinds of things. It’s not just the media, ‘oh the media!’, that’s not just that! It’s also the people that they talk to, the experiences of others, the books they read, the- there are all kinds of things. We again, what do we perceive or experience, and how do we translate that into how it’s going to affect us?

00;29;29;19 – 00;30;05;01
Rick Hoaglund
As a first responder, it may be difficult to reach out for help, and changing the culture where you work may seem impossible, but change does happen. In the next episode, we continue our discussion with Dr. Daniels on how to transform your workplace and yourself. You’ve been listening to OnTopic with Empathia. For other episodes, please visit our website, www.Empathia.com. Follow us on social media @Empathia, and subscribe to OnTopic with Empathia to hear new episodes as soon as they go live. I’m Rick Hoaglund – thanks for listening to OnTopic with Empathia!