19th March 2025
Nikki Budzinki
113 South 4th Street
Springfield, IL 62701
Dear Nikki Budzinki,
I am a full time social work student at the University of Illinois in Springfield. I have also been a Certified Nursing Assistant for ten years. As such, I know that taking care of other people, especially in understaffed conditions, can be extremely stressful and lead to burnout, causing people to leave the profession. Mental health services need to be included as a stipend upon the enactment of the hiring process for workers that deal with traumatic events on a regular basis, these include firefighters, paramedics, police officers, and other first responders.
Emergency first responders deal with critical situations on a daily basis and this affects not only their mental wellness, but also their relationships with coworkers and family, as well as their productivity in the workplace setting. Communication efforts take a backseat as details get lost in translation. The need for privacy and confidentiality regarding the nature of their work and the clients they face ensure that certain topics causing secondary trauma remain unspoken about. The lack of recognition, understaffing, long hours and low pay among these professions can lead to resentment and cause people to want to leave the field. Personally, I know of at least ten people that have left the medical field for all of these conditions combined, and even more that want to but won’t because they know that they are making a slight difference.
One of the major problems that we see today is burnout, which is caused by long-term exposures to uncontrolled demanding work situations. Burnout is multi-faceted and is characterized by emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and cynicism (ten Brummelhuis et al., 2011). When workers are over-exerted, they tend to forgo important safety measures put in place to protect not only them but their clients and communities. Burnout has been linked to error, fatigue, cognitive weariness, reduced safety performance, and injury (Smith, DeJoy, Dyal, & Huang, 2019). Additionally, burnout has been linked to safety behavior deviations and violations such as personal protective equipment compliance, adherence to safe work practices, and safety reporting and communication (Smith, Hughes, DeJoy, & Dyal, 2018). In order to combat burnout, employers need to meet their workers halfway. New policies need to be implemented to promote mental wellness in the workplace. By implementing wellness stipends to these more stressful workforces, we will enhance communication, job satisfaction and provide an outlet to talk about any secondary trauma that otherwise goes ignored.
Another key factor hindering the workplace environment and stimulating the need for mental wellness stipends is secondary traumatization. In a study by Alexander and Klein (2001), more than 80% of paramedics reported having experienced an ‘extraordinarily disturbing incident’ in the past 6 months. As a result, stress levels are raised. This elevated stress level may lead to mental and physical changes (Herman, 1997), such as emotional exhaustion, irritability, sleep disturbances, fatigue, problems with interpersonal relationships (Mahoney, 1997; Thoreson, Miller, & Krauskopf, 1989), concerns for individual safety (Eriksson, Kemp, Gorsuch, Hoke, & Foy, 2001), and even intrusive images (Burns, Morley, Bradshaw, & Domene, 2008). It is an increasing problem that needs to be addressed. Part of the issue is the stigma around it, people don’t always understand that the event doesn’t have to happen to you in order to be traumatic. There is also a mentality among many first responders that you have to block everything out or failing that, find different coping mechanisms for the trauma instead of dealing with the issue directly. As such, it can lead to people feeling uncomfortable talking to their coworkers and especially, people who don’t understand the situation at all.The wrong outlets can cause issues as well. So, my proposal once again, is a wellness stipend upon hire that can be used at any time on mental health apps, gyms, yoga, meditation and counseling.
Wellness stipends are taxable and can range anywhere from 150 dollars annually to 2,000 dollars annually per employee for bigger, wealthier corporations. While this may seem like a lot, the average company spends approximately 4,700 dollars for every new employee hired by the time you calculate recruitment costs, onboard training, and paperwork (Navarra,2022). Annually, companies spend approximately anywhere from 660,000 to 2.6 million dollars replacing employees (Prokopets, 2024). So when you compare that amount to what it would cost for wellness stipends to be implemented upon hire, you are losing less money by adding the stipend as it will likely increase longevity and overall satisfaction in the workplace, calling for less turnover.
Thank you so much for your consideration on this matter. I look forward to hearing from you.
Sincerely,
[Student's name]
Paramedics are shockingly underpaid, as are some types of healthcare professionals, but emergency medicine doctors, firefighters, and police officers in Illinois are fairly well-paid, as are most social workers who do therapeutic work. If your argument is that these emergency first responders need mental health care, but can't afford it, that is a good argument for the paramedics and some types of nurses or nurse-aides in medical settings.
I would suggest that one of the best arguments to make for this sort of policy is to suggest that emergency first responders should be given physical medical examinations and mental health check-ups at least once every twelve months (or, you could argue for every six months). There are ethical reasons why social workers cannot provide services to a client who does not want services and is not exhibiting any problem emotions or behaviors, but if we conceive of this as an opportunity for an annual mental health examination where professionals are assessed for mental wellness and burnout, and then are given further services as warranted if needed, then we have a situation that could be ethical.
You have a policy idea for some sort of state regulation of standards for certain types of professions. You have addressed your letter to a member of the U.S. House of Representatives. Your specific request from Representative Budzinski could be to use her position in Washington to raise awareness of the need for mental health screening and wellness care for certain professions in general, perhaps holding hearings at the federal level and perhaps establishing a Department of Justice grant program to help states implement this sort of program. Or, you might be asking her to act as a prominent leader within the state's Democratic party to push this sort of policy among her friends in the state Democratic Party, since legislation to require the mental wellness stipends would almost certainly come at the state or local level.
I think you also could have mentioned three local cases of recent years that have illustrated the dangers of having stressed and psychologically damaged persons in first responder positions. The emergency medical workers who killed Earl Moore Jr., and the police officers who stood by and recorded the events leading to his death on their cameras, all showed signs of burnout and lack of empathy. The Sheriff Deputy who murdered Sonya Massey was clearly a person with psychological problems, and he should have been noticed and helped before he went into the field and murdered an innocent woman. We also had that disturbed neo-nazi on the Springfield police force (the one who resigned in April 2022). And, there was the case of Samuel Rosario, who was suffering from PTSD related to his service in Iraq, and the February 2017 misconduct recorded on his body cam that led to his being kicked off the force. Just Sangamon county provides these several examples of mental instability in first responders. I think we could also make a case for some care and screening of people who work in the County Jail, based on some of the deaths that have occurred in there, and what I've heard about how people behave in there.
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