Ep. 101: Brooke Lundquist, PhD, LMHC - Advocating for Mental Health

But I want to dive into our current topic and then maybe circle back on that.

So the integration of mental health within first responder agencies starts at the leadership level.

So my first question to start is, where are we in the integration of mental health in first responder agencies?

Yeah, that's a great question.

I feel like I have the honor of being in a pretty progressive agencies in my area that are very much integrating mental health as a priority.

And so I think there's a range, right? There's a range from where I think we're really kind of trying to figure out front runners, like how do we develop these programs to be really efficient and effective for departments all the way down to what is this? What does this look like? How do we find people to come in and support our members? And so thankfully the departments I'm a part of, I feel like we're very progressive in that there's a great belief in this work and in how to integrate that in as a norm within the department, rather than having it be kind of this outside thing.

It's very much integrated in with the culture.

Yeah.

Well, you said something important.

You said belief, like the leadership.

There's a belief.

There's a culture of belief.

So how important is it to have that belief, we'll say, to have programs such as mental health and other programs to be integrated into a department, we'll say? And then secondly – Is that where it starts? Because why I ask that is if there's no belief in, you know, we'll say leadership or there's no culture, how can we get over that hump and say, you know, we need to prioritize programs such as mental health, but if the culture doesn't buy into it, are we just in trouble?

Right.

I think it very much is systemic where if a leadership maybe doesn't believe in this, people have to kind of go their own way.

They've got to figure out their own resources.

They've got to do their own work to find a counselor or, you know, resources in the mental health field.

And maybe sometimes that also feels more hidden sometimes.

because it's not this like openly spoken about topic that's integrated into the day-to-day.

I mean, I thankfully get to be integrated into the day-to-day operations of a few fire departments as whether it's proactive, Checking in with people, being a presence, creating relationships or reactive, critical incidents, personal challenges people are facing and being a support on that end.

I really believe it does start with the leadership level and that we have so much push with that to to say, hey.

People at our agency, this is important.

We believe in this.

And we're going to support this not only time-wise, but financially as well to show you how important you are to us.

Kind of that people-first mentality.