The price officers pay for responding to hundreds of critical incidents over a career

Dr. Heather Williams, founder of Premier First Responder Psychological Services, came of age professionally in an era when increased attention - and resources - was brought to mental health and wellness for members of the emergency response professions as well as victims of crimes.

Williams spent more than 20 years working in crisis and trauma from differing perspectives, both with the Orange County Sheriff deputies in peer support and victims of crime with the Community Service Programs (CSP) Victim Assistance Programs.While the connections between the two may not be apparent at first, Williams says, “When you think of crime and victimization, it’s like a ripple effect. When you throw a rock in a pond, the ripples spread and many people are affected.”While working with the sheriff’s and victims’ programs,

Williams said she was “peer pressured,” to go back to school and earn her doctorate. In 2019, she created Premier, which offers counseling, consulting, peer support, crisis response and wellness resources to criminal justice personnel and first responders.

Since Williams entered the field, shocking statistics such as the rate of suicide among police have been researched and discussed with solutions hard to come by. Between 2016 and 2022, 1,200 law enforcement and corrections officers died by suicide according to First HELP, an organization that tracks first responder suicides.Officer-involved shootings, child abuse, vehicle accidents, death or serious injury of co-workers, line-of-duty death, and gruesome homicides are just a few examples of such events, referred to as critical incidents that police are regularly exposed to.

While members of the public may be exposed to two or three critical incidents in a life, by the time a police officer retires that can easily be subjected to 200 or 300, Williams said.Williams sat with Joe Vargas, a retired Anaheim Police Captain and columnist, content editor with Behind the Badge, to talk about trauma, PTSD, and mental issues responders face, the realities and myths, and strategies to handle and treat them. 

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