SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Like anyone, mentally Jeremy Duckham has his good days and bad days, but as a recently retired police officer whose job it was to constantly deal with traumatic events, the good days can start to become non-existent because of the trauma.
“There’s about 20 or so [incidents] that stick in my mind, that I have trouble with still. And I can’t tell you why it’s those 20 because there’s probably been 100s,” Duckham said.
Duckham spent 20 years in large metropolitan police departments and finally as a school resource officer in Northern California. For many years, he felt compelled to deal with it on his own because of a bravado attitude within law enforcement and phrases like “you know what you signed up for.”
“You know, back when I started 20 years ago, I feel it was a little bit more like suck it up mentality,” Duckham said. “You know the department will send you to see a councilor. You know they do the obligatory 72 hours, three days off, go see somebody, and come back to duty. Mental health is a very difficult situation in law enforcement.”
The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration in a study found about 75% of surveyed officers reported having experienced a traumatic event, but less than half of them had told their agency about it.
They also report an estimated 125 to 300 die from suicide each year.
Duckham said for him the traumatic experiences became too much and a big reason he retired, which came to the forefront during the pandemic when school’s shutdown.
“It created a situation for me where I started down a rabbit hole of depression, anxiety, eventually some suicidal thoughts,” he said.
The pandemic meant a lot of law enforcement or first responders were either faced with isolation like Duckham, or thrust into traumatic experiences on front lines.
Donna Arz runs the Placer Reset program in Placer County that helps first responders deal with PTSD, including Duckham, and said the pandemic caused a lot more to seek help.
“Oh huge, we went to Zoom because you couldn’t do it in-person but people are still suffering,” Arz said. “So, we went to Zoom, and phone calls, and it never stopped here.”
Arz said that for first responders, privacy away from departments is a big reason many have reached out to her program.
“It’s a safe space for them to come and open up with whatever they need to open up with,” she said. “And not feel frightened or they’re gonna be rejected with their job, or told to suck it up and be stronger.”
Duckham said officers can be retired for medical reasons, and that fear of being retired for mental health reasons can stop some from expressing their distress.
“I know somebody that was the sole provider in his family and had to medically retire due to mental health reasons, stress,” he said. “You know he didn’t have medical insurance and then was forced to have to pay thousands of dollars for medical insurance after being forced to retire, and that’s a huge fear.”
One county over at the Sacramento Sheriff’s Department, Lt. Jimmy McFarland, who oversees the wellness department for the roughly 1200 sworn officers, said confidentiality for them is a priority.
“There is a sense of confidentiality at every level, which covers peer, chaplaincy and even a therapist,” McFarland said. “We get out and we communicate with the supervisors, the managers and commanders, as well as the line staff to let them know, ‘Hey, we are here. Call us early, call us often.’”
Police are charged with using deadly force and McFarland said there are measures in place to make sure officers are given the time to recover, to make sure they are in the right space to make life and death decisions.
“We do our best to monitor our personnel,” he said. “When brought to our attention and they start receiving the resources we provide, we leave it to the medical professionals to decide when the person’s ready to come back or not. Should we believe he’s not, there are some steps we can take to have them asses to ensure that the officer’s in the best physical, mental state to serve and protect.”
For Duckham, he said his old department still checks in on him, but he is glad to have found Arz and Placer Reset.
“What she has done for me has helped me realize these situations will always be a part of me,” he said. “And they’ll always be in my mind, and I’m always going to think about them for the rest of my life, but I can get to a place where it’s no longer going to affect me in a negative way.”
For others like him, Duckham said he hopes with a shift in culture and more mental health options provided, more officers will feel confident enough to seek help like he did.
Placer Reset is a free program for first responders. If you would like more information, visit its website.