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Proposal Would Make It Easier For First Responders to Access PTSD Treatment

This week Maine lawmakers will consider whether to make it easier for first responders to receive treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder.

If approved, PTSD would be considered a work-related injury for police, firefighters and EMTs. Supporters say it would reduce stigma and make it easier to receive treatment. But the Maine Municipal Association says it’s a mismatched solution that fails to prevent PTSD.

For 25 years, Roger Guay worked for the Maine Warden Service, tracking poachers, lost hunters and hikers. But the job also took a personal toll. He responded to numerous fatalities and had to deliver bad news to grieving families.

“Inevitably, you kind of feel like you’re, in a way, causing that grief to happen, because, you know, you bring it,” he says.

After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Guay volunteered to recover bodies in New Orleans, and that’s when he hit a breaking point. He developed migraines and couldn’t concentrate. He started avoiding certain aspects of his job because he felt he could easily explode.

Guay suspected he had PTSD because the Warden Service educated its officers about it. Even so, he was reluctant to ask for help.

“The challenge that you run into in law enforcement is you really don’t want to say anything, because then what? You get put on the sidelines, or who knows what’s going to happen to you, so the tendency is to absorb it and stay quiet, and meanwhile, it gets worse and worse and worse and worse,” he says.

A bill before the Maine Legislature aims to carve an easier path for first responders like Guay to get help. It would give presumptive eligibility for PTSD under workers’ compensation, meaning if a psychiatrist makes a PTSD diagnosis, it would be presumed to be work-related.

That’s a departure from the current system, where first responders have to prove their PTSD stems from their work.

“If I work at UPS and I pick up boxes all day long, I know my back may hurt. It is a workplace injury. It’s not a sign that I’m weak, or that I need to toughen up,” says Jenna Mehnert, the executive director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness in Maine, which helped draft the bill.

Similar laws have passed in Canada, and a handful of states are also considering them. Mehnert says treating PTSD as a workplace injury not only gives better access to treatment, it reduces stigma in a profession based on helping others.

“The bottom line is we need to send a clear message to them that their mental health matters, and we stand with law enforcement,” she says.

“If there is a perceived stigma in the community, there might be other ways to address that that would be more effective,” says Garrett Corbin, a legislative advocate for the Maine Municipal Association.

Corbin says the MMA supports first responders getting mental health treatment, but he says efforts should focus on preventing PTSD, and this bill doesn’t do that. In addition, he says this makes a fundamental change to workers’ comp.

“It will be the municipal employer who has the burden of disproving PTSD, rather than the employee who has the burden of proving that they have developed PTSD in the course of their employment,” he says.

And that potentially means more costs for property taxpayers, Corbin says, from legal fees.

The MMA, along with the Workers’ Compensation Coordinating Council — which represents employers — were the only two organizations to testify against the bill during a public hearing in March. The Maine State Federation of Firefighters, the Maine State Troopers Association and the Maine Chiefs of Police Association are among nearly two dozen organizations and individuals who came to testify in support.

“Those that are taking care of us should be taken care of,” says Troy Morton, the Penobscot County Sheriff. “I think we’re doing a much better job with our military, and it’s time that this is done in public safety.”

Guay says the current system, which puts the burden of proof on first responders to prove their PTSD is work-related, creates barriers that can feel insurmountable.

“Barriers, when you’re sitting in a chair with PTSD, are the size of Mount Katahdin, because you’re not thinking clearly. You’re not thinking rationally. And you put a barrier in front of me, it might be two inches high, and I can’t get over it because I’m a mess,” he says.

After he struggled alone with PTSD for nine months, Guay says two colleagues intervened and encouraged him to get treatment, which he says has helped him recover. But he says not everyone is that fortunate.

This story was originally published July 18, 2017 at 4:35 p.m. ET.