FLORENCE, SC (WBTW) – Florence County Emergency Management Services is working to change stigmas about mental health among first responders by offering counseling and emotional support to its employees after losing two of its own to suicide. 

60-year-old Gene Avin committed suicide last week, nearly one year after his daughter, 26-year-old Emily, took her life. Gene was a retired lieutenant and Emily had worked as a firefighter and a paramedic. 

Since Emily’s death in September 2017, Florence County EMS created the PEER team, with the assistance of the Low Country Firefighters Support Team. The PEER team focuses on supporting first responders both emotionally and mentally, assisting them through the rigors of the job, and encouraging them to seek help when they feel stressed, traumatized or vulnerable. 

“We get told ‘you signed up to see these things.’ ‘You signed up to see what people do to each other and what happens to people.’ Some of it’s tragic emotionally, some of it’s very mentally-scarring, just being gruesome of what we see. It stays with you. It affects you,” said Lt. Paramedic Crew Chief Kevin Gwyer. “There’s the stigma that it’s not okay to not be okay. You’re supposed to be the strong one. You’re not supposed to have the problem. You’re not supposed to have the mental illness capacity of it. And we’re working to change that mentality.”

Gwyer and Lee Hopkins, the Pee Dee Coordinator for Low Country Firefighters Support Team, both say mental health isn’t talked about enough among emergency crews due to stigmas and a culture that has encouraged first responders to hide their emotions. 

“We had a saying back in the fire department, ‘Suck it up, Buttercup or quit what you’re doing,’ and that’s absolutely not what we need to do now,” said Hopkins. “We need to focus on being able to be there for each other. I’ve never seen Batman or Robin jump out of an ambulance, a fire truck or a police car. Everybody’s a human being and everyone has feelings and emotions. And it’s just how you have to process those things to continue to do your job.”

The PEER team also educates paramedics what signs and symptoms to look out for in themselves and in their partners. 

“We’re not with these people 24 hours a day. Their partners are. So we count of them to be able to see the signs and symptoms of somebody who’s struggling so that we can get them the help they need,” Hopkins said. 

The PEER team at Florence County EMS has been operating since January. The Low Country Firefighters Support Team started their PEER team in 2007. They have about 16 to 18 clinicians on the team. Hopkins says about 8% of dispatchers seek professional help each year. The team also offers mental health insurance.