Podcast
Ep. 10 Transcript: First Responder Peer Support with Jonathan Lang
Transcript
DANIELLE DONALDSON: Welcome to Peer Into Recovery, a podcast with a focus on the profession of peer support. For more information about how to subscribe, please visit our website at www.vprsn.org. Welcome, everyone, and thank you for joining us. I am your host, Danielle Donaldson. In this episode, I’m going to be speaking with Jonathan Lang about First Responder Peer Support. Jonathan has served for 18 years as a firefighter EMT at Fort Belvoir Fire and Emergency Services, at Bethesda National Naval Medical Center, and at Ford Operating Base Camp Bucca, Iraq. Motivated by the tragic loss of a co-worker and his own struggles with substance use disorder and mental illness, Jonathan has successfully founded and developed the country’s first federal peer support program for first responders at a US Army installation. He is also a member of the International Association of Firefighters Behavioral Health Committee, representing the 16th District, in breaking the stigma and making a change in how the fire service responds to their own in regards to behavioral health and substance use disorder. Jonathan also works part-time in the evenings for the Alive RVA program in Richmond, Virginia, as a Peer Recovery Support Specialist, answering the Warm Line. He has also founded and created the organization, Hope for Emergency Responders Organization, that provides funding, a scholarship for teens going into college who have lost a First Responder loved one to suicide or overdose, as well as a First Responder Warm Line, staffed by fellow First Responder Peer Support Specialists. Hi, Jonathan. Thank you and welcome for joining me. How are you doing today?
JONATHAN LANG: I’m doing great.
DANIELLE DONALDSON: Thank you so much for coming on the podcast to talk about peer support for first responders. I’m really excited to learn more about it.
JONATHAN LANG: Awesome. Well, yeah.
DANIELLE DONALDSON: Okay. Let me ask the first question then. So just to begin, how did you get started in working in peer support? What drew you to it?
JONATHAN LANG: So what drew me to it was pretty much my own personal journey. I’m an alcoholic and an addict myself in long-term recovery. What that means for me is I haven’t had a drug or a sip of alcohol since October 2nd of 2015. So that’s where my motivation came from. You know, dealing with my own issues in a suicide at work. Sorry. So dealing with my own issues in a suicide at work got my wheels turning. One of my friends at the fire department ended up taking his own life. And nobody saw any of the signs or symptoms or anything that was going on with him. Nobody could see it coming. It was like, oh, you know, what happened? And then so that kind of got the wheels turning with me like, oh, there needs to be some kind of program or there has to be something in place to where people can notice these signs and symptoms and people feel okay to talk about mental health issues. You know, within the fire service is very hard. There’s a very there’s a very big stigma involved with, you know, being mentally weak, as they as some people say it, or, you know, mentally or spiritually or anything like that, any kind of weakness is they pounce on that. So and then with my own issues, you know, I went to rehab and, you know, I was struggling big time at work. You know, I would come in hung over and, you know, people would just kind of brush it off and say, oh, go sleep it off or, you know, nobody held me accountable for my actions and nobody will call me out on what I was doing and it just allowed it to happen. So, you know, I slipped through the cracks and I feel like my friend slipped through the cracks as well. And that’s where my motivation came from. You know, finally, after I had about a year of sobriety under my belt, you know, I started and I had a strong, solid recovery program. That’s when I started thinking, well, I don’t want anybody else to slip through the cracks. I don’t want to see somebody else. I don’t want to see another, you know, brother or sister die, you know, by taking their own life or see somebody struggling with with drugs or alcohol, you know, and I think that with being able to have training and have, you know, certain people, individuals assigned to, you know, having that kind of role or responsibility within the fire service of looking out for other people, you know, I thought that was extremely important. So I kind of came up with a peer support team for work.
DANIELLE DONALDSON: Was it like readily accepted or were people kind of hesitant to how was peer support, you know, the concept of it received by them?
JONATHAN LANG: So it was received pretty well because I was very vocal about my own issues and my own struggles. Luckily, I had very open-minded leadership at work. However, unfortunately, it’s not that it’s not the most case for, you know, other individuals in other departments and stuff like that where the stigma of having something mentally or spiritually wrong with you, it’s horrible. So it was dealt with, you know, with open arms because I think because I was so vocal with how bad I was struggling and they realized that, yes, we do need something in place. So luckily, I had all the support for my leadership that I needed.
DANIELLE DONALDSON: That’s great. So does peer support for first responders look different? Does it differ from what we normally think of as peer support in the mental health and substance use realm?
JONATHAN LANG: Well, it doesn’t look different. Okay, it does. So being a peer support specialist, like for the state of Virginia, or, you know, you go get your certification, it requires that person to have some kind of lived experience. You know, like me, I’m an alcoholic addict. You know, I suffer from depression. You know, I have that lived experience so I can relate to other people. That’s usually a requirement for a peer support specialist. Whereas in the fire service, you don’t have to have the lived experience. You just have to have the empathy and the sympathy and the want to help. You know, you don’t have to have, you know, some kind of disorder or something like that. All you have to have is just the want to help somebody. So I think that’s where it looks differently.
DANIELLE DONALDSON: So, and do you cover more than just mental health challenges and addiction? Do you also just, is it peer support just for the profession itself? You know, the stress and the trauma that you guys see on a daily basis?
JONATHAN LANG: Yeah, absolutely. It’s, you know, going to a bad call, you know, losing a patient or something like that, you know, something that can really weigh heavily on somebody, you know, we would, we would talk about it and let that person know that, hey, it’s okay to feel this way. It’s normal whenever you lose a patient or, you know, you went to a really bad call or something like that. It’s okay to have these feelings, you know, that of failure sometimes and you know, so yeah, that and, you know, for the in the fire service, you know, the divorce rate is very high as well. So it’s not just, it’s not just the work itself that we respond to or, you know, provide peer support for. It’s also, you know, family life. The schedule is very hard. You know, we work, we’re long for like two, three days at a time. And that can weigh heavily on your personal life. And, you know, so we also help out with that. So it’s not just work and calls and stuff like that, but it’s every aspect of life.
DANIELLE DONALDSON: Do you have regular peer support like group meetings? Or what does it look like? You know, what does peer support look like, I guess, on a day to day basis?
JONATHAN LANG: So, yeah, we have once a month, we have a meeting of all the peer support specialists that are within the department, just to kind of go over new training or, you know, specifically with confidentiality is the most important thing when it comes to peer support in the fire service. You know, nobody’s going to trust you if they tell you something that’s going on and you go and you tell somebody else, you know. So, you know, during these meetings, if we have somebody that we’re, you know, have questions about or if we need, you know, some help with another peer support specialist for a peer, you know, we would talk about that as well. But remaining the confidentiality is the most important thing. A lot of times, it’s just phone calls. A lot of times, it’s text messages and phone calls with another peer that you’re helping. You know, some one on ones, if you notice that somebody has been struggling for the day, if you notice somebody came in and they’ve been having a really hard time, you would sit down one on one with them and try to figure out what’s going on and also responding to incidences. So if another department, so we had a neighboring department who went through a suicide. And we actually sent the team up there of four guys went up there and provided peer support for that department.
DANIELLE DONALDSON: Oh, that’s good.
JONATHAN LANG: Yeah.
DANIELLE DONALDSON: Yeah, that’s nice to hear that you guys are kind of collaborating and supporting even outside your usual group, I guess. I’m not sure how you’re, you know, how you’re…
JONATHAN LANG: Well, our department, yeah. So, I mean, we don’t just, you know, we don’t just help each other in our own department, but if there’s a neighboring department or something like that, you know, we would, then they would call for a need. So they know that we have a peer support team. A lot of departments don’t have one because they just don’t have the resources to be able to get it together, or they don’t have the people that, you know, are motivated to get it together. But they do know that, like, we have a peer support team, so they would call us when some kind of event happened. And, like I said, it was a suicide within their department. They didn’t know how to handle it, so they called us, and we went out and responded to that department and sat down with the individuals and talked with them and let them talk to us, you know. And just letting them know that you’re there for them if they needed anything, I think, is a huge help, you know. And just, you know, telling them that it’s okay to feel a certain way. It doesn’t mean you’re weak-minded or anything like that. It just means you’re human.
DANIELLE DONALDSON: So I heard you mention that not every department, you know, has the capabilities of providing peer support to their first responders. But you obviously have experience in creating programs like that. What is it looking like as far as the future of First Responder Peer Support? Do you see more of that becoming available? Is there…
JONATHAN LANG: Yeah, absolutely. It’s… So I think ever since 2018, you know, it’s kind of like peer support in the fire service or for first responders in general. It’s kind of like the shiny new toy. It’s… Everybody wants to be a part of it. Everybody wants to have a program. Everybody wants to do it because it’s… The stigma is getting lifted. It’s… You know, and that’s a success. You know, that’s one of the big things, reasons why, like, I joined the International Association of Firefighters Behavioral Health Committee was to… So I could have a voice in the change of the stigma attached to behavioral health and addiction. You know, it is… It’s getting better. Ten years ago, this way, it would have never been like this. There were ten years ago, there would have never been a peer support team. Nobody would have been talking about, you know, feelings or, you know, this is going on at home or, you know, hey, that call, that last call we ran really messed me up. You know, nobody would ever talk about that. It was always joked or joked about or pushed aside or buried deep. You know, so it looks completely different than it did ten years ago. And, you know, and it all has to do with getting training and getting more people in leadership roles saying, hey, it’s OK to to not be OK, you know?
DANIELLE DONALDSON: Yeah, yeah. Is there anything particularly unique about doing peer support in this type of setting? Is it does it greatly differ from like, I guess, answering the warmline for AliveRVA, does that differ from the warmline, the first responder warmline? Or probably not. But I’m just curious.
JONATHAN LANG: It does. You know, a lot of the big thing is being able to relate. You know, so like I was told a story from somebody that they, so they have a therapist that they go and see. And this therapist has no, like, experience with First Responders or Firefighters or anything like that. And this individual opened up to the therapist and told him about a story about an accident that still stuck with him. It still resonated with him, you know, even to this day. And at the end of the session, the therapist was crying. So, that’s, you know, so I think that’s a big difference, you know. It’s being able to relate to another First Responder or another firefighter. It’s completely different than, you know, talking to somebody on the warm line for a live RVA, because, you know, a lot of times I don’t relate to that person. I could just, you know, offer the peer support and the resources. Whereas, in, you know, dealing with a First Responder, you know, I can relate and tell them that, yeah, you know, I understand, you know.
DANIELLE DONALDSON: Well, and it seems to me that in some ways, First Responder, and correct me if I’m wrong, First Responder Peer Support and perhaps Crisis Peer Support have some overlaps. I mean, the significant trauma that I imagine that both groups, both sets of peer specialists are exposed to are somewhat similar. So it probably takes that, you know, kind of unique individual that can be in that environment on a daily basis.
JONATHAN LANG: Yeah. Yep.
DANIELLE DONALDSON: Now, do you have many issues kind of recruiting new peer specialists, well, first responder peer specialists? Is there more people out there interested in becoming one, or is there a need? What is that kind of employment outlook? Not necessarily employment, it could be volunteer. But you know what I mean, what does that outlook look like right now?
JONATHAN LANG: It’s good. So I have people that constantly send me emails that want to be a part of the peer support team. We’ve actually had to turn people away. So we have a process that we go through in order to be a part of the peer support team. You have to have approval from your supervisor to be able to do it, just because we want to make sure that you don’t have too much on your plate going on, because it can be a pretty challenging role. But once they get the approval through their supervisor, then they go through an interview process with four other peer support specialists in a manager, lead firefighter also. So we actually do vet people just to pretty much find out their motives and talk to them about what they’re about to get into it if they are capable of it. Being able to take care of themselves as well, that’s really important. It’s self-care. That’s one of the questions on the interview panel. But yeah, I got a lot of people that want to be a part of the team because they see how much it helps and how positive it’s become within the fire service and they want to be a part of it. So yeah, we don’t ever have an issue with people wanting to join. Or like I said, sometimes we have to turn people away.
DANIELLE DONALDSON: Do you have your own peer recovery specialist curriculum or what type of training do you use for them?
JONATHAN LANG: So we have, there’s a lot of training out there. Free training, there’s training that obviously you have to pay for. That’s fortunately, you know, with our leadership, we’ve been able to get some training brought in. Virginia First Responder Support Services, it’s an organization in the state of Virginia. They have a class, a two day peer support class that they teach. And it’s a really good class. So yeah, and then the International Association of Firefighters, they have a class as well, but that one’s pretty expensive to bring in. It’s a three day class that they come in and they teach. It’s all on peer support, mental health and substance use disorder. You know, there’s role playing involved in it. And, you know, it’s a really good class. But, you know, if you if you look, there’s a ton of training out there for peer support, including, you know, CISM, which is critical incident stress management. You know, there’s just a bunch of different ways, but we don’t have one set curriculum right now, just because, you know, we kind of take what we can get when we can get it. You know, so there’s no set curriculum, but you do have to. So anybody who’s on the team has to keep up with 10 hours of training a year. OK, yeah, they have to provide documentation that they’ve had, you know, 10 hour refresher training every single year. And they do have to, whenever they come on board, they do have to get involved in a two day or three day peer support class that’s provided by whoever’s teaching it. You know.
DANIELLE DONALDSON: So do you have any particular resources you could recommend for anybody who would be interested in learning more about First Responder Peer Support?
JONATHAN LANG: Yeah, so there’s a couple. They can go on to the Virginia First Responder Support Services website. It’s vfrss.org, I believe. They can go on there and there’s a ton of stuff on there to see, you know, about classes and training and stuff like that. And also the International Association of Firefighters, they have, if you go on to their website as well, and you go under the behavioral health section, there’s a ton of resources. There’s classes and online classes you can take. You can, you know, the resources are out there.
DANIELLE DONALDSON: Are there any Virginia-specific resources, or are those really kind of specific to the department or the region that you’re located in?
JONATHAN LANG: No, for training, Virginia First Responder Support Services is the one I recommend, BFRSS. That they are specifically for the state of Virginia, and they do all the peer support training and classes and everything. So that would be the first place I would look to go.
DANIELLE DONALDSON: And if there was a First Responder out there looking for peer support, what would you recommend they do if they don’t already have access to something like that in their department?
JONATHAN LANG: So, I would definitely give them a call, VFRSS. You kind of got me on that one. I’m trying to think of, I’m trying to remember our phone number for my nonprofit. Let me look here real quick.
DANIELLE DONALDSON: Sorry about that. It just occurred to me. I was like, I wonder what someone would do if they don’t have peer support readily available, where would they start?
JONATHAN LANG: So, they would start with Hero First. That’s my organization.
DANIELLE DONALDSON: Okay.
JONATHAN LANG: It’s my nonprofit. We have a warm line, specifically for first responders, and that phone number is 844-833-4376.
DANIELLE DONALDSON: Okay.
JONATHAN LANG: And that’s where I would go to first to call. We have trained peer support specialists that man the warm line for my organization. And it’s actually gotten kind of busy the past month. And busy, I mean, we’ve gotten three phone calls. So, it takes a lot for somebody to reach out for help.
DANIELLE DONALDSON: Oh, yes, without a doubt.
JONATHAN LANG: Yeah, because whenever somebody is reaching out for help, that means it’s real. And some people don’t want to think that it’s real, that there’s something really wrong or anything like that. So, just the fact that I’ve had three phone calls within the past month is huge for me. And basically, a listening ear, non-judgmental listening ear is something people need every once in a while and possibly some resources. So, I’m able to provide resources for whatever that person may need.
DANIELLE DONALDSON: And the call is confidential.
JONATHAN LANG: Absolutely.
DANIELLE DONALDSON: That’s always something to remind people that peer support is confidential.
JONATHAN LANG: Yeah, I can’t reiterate that enough. Confidentiality is the most important thing to this. I mean, obviously, being a mandated reporter, if you’re discussing harm to yourself or to somebody else, or abuse to the elderly or abuse to children, that kind of stuff, I have to report being a mandated reporter. But, you know, everything else is confidential, 100%. Right.
DANIELLE DONALDSON: Are there any last thoughts that you would like to share?
JONATHAN LANG: Uh, no. Honestly, yeah, I don’t really have anything else.
DANIELLE DONALDSON: Oh, that’s great. Well, thank you very much, Jonathan, for what you do. And thank you for joining me today. And thank you for listening to the Peer Into the Recovery Podcast, which was brought to you by the Virginia Peer Recovery Specialist Network and Mental Health America of Virginia. Stay well, everyone.
