Treatment of PTS for first responders

Emergency medical responders and firefighters are routinely eyewitnesses to scenes of catastrophic incidents involving severe injuries, tragic loss of human life and property loss. The cumulative effects of these exposures on emergency personnel might result in psychological injuries and even suicides.

Studies confirm that rates of post-traumatic stress within this workforce are comparable to other high-stress occupations such as law enforcement officers and military combat veterans.

Only in recent years has the link between these professional experiences and PTS and related behavioral health conditions been recognized. Many EMS agencies and fire departments lack the capabilities to assist personnel by providing counseling, support services and coping tools necessary to treat those suffering from PTS and resulting behavioral disorders. In the absence of specialized treatment, some EMS practitioners and fire fighters engage in increasingly harmful behaviors including substance abuse, self-harm and suicide. For many, this suffering is a private affair often kept from co-workers, friends and family. There is no means to accurately capture data regarding the incidences of practitioner and firefighter suicide.

Rep. Ami Bera (D-Calif.) has introduced the HERO Act in the U.S. House of Representatives to provide resources to increase recognition and treatment of PTS for EMS practitioners and fire fighters, provide grants to establish and assist peer-to-peer support programs, and collect data on EMS practitioner and firefighter suicides.

Illa Brown

Colorado Springs

How America should work

Regarding the Washington Examiner op-ed in the Monday opinion pages, (“Our immigration laws should serve America”), how exactly is an immigration agent/examiner to determine which applicants are “likely at any time to become a public charge?”

A person’s current condition is not predictive of their future condition. Many, many immigrants seek out America for opportunity they do not have at home. If they are poor it is often because there is no opportunity to climb out of poverty in their homeland. If they are ill-educated, it is often because there is no opportunity for them or their children to avail themselves of education. If we exclude those who are not yet successful we will exclude many future entrepreneurs, scientists, doctors and teachers.

An example from personal experience: We sponsored my wife’s eldest sister. When she arrived in Colorado Springs over 30 years ago, she spoke no English and had only the clothes in her suitcase and a little cash. Within a week, she found a job (via the local Korean “underground”) stuffing advertisements into the Thursday and Sunday Gazette. Within another month, she was connected with a well-to-do Korean family in New York City and traveled there for a job as a nanny. Within a year, she saved enough to pay for her eldest son to join her. She found an abandoned grocery store in Queens and, using funds from her and her extended family’s savings, leased the building. She bought an old delivery truck and via connections with regional truck farms (some Korean owned… see a pattern here?) established a source of fresh vegetables for the produce market she opened in that abandoned grocery. Soon, her other two children arrived to help with the business.

A family worked and earned a good living, a neighborhood that once had only convenience stores to shop for food in gained a source of fresh produce, the city/state/nation gained a new source of tax revenue and the “American dream” gained another chapter. Under the proposed new rules, Kim In Sim might never have been granted entry.

If you want to know how America should work, follow an immigrant around. If you are trying to teach your children about the virtue of persistence, hard work and about the value of delayed gratification, have them follow an immigrant around.

Douglas Dickerson

Colorado Springs

The only ‘right’ is to die

I appreciated the recent Opinion page pro and cons about a “right” to health care, and figured I’d provide my 2-cents worth:

The definition of a “right” seems to be an entitlement or basic human expectation; an ownership and necessity that one is born to, and may not be alienated.

In that regard, the only “right” I can comprehend, then, is to die. Despite the Founding Father’s Declaration of Independence proffering “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (property)” being fundamental entitlements of mankind, life is easily extinguished, liberty is a rare commodity necessitating defense, and happiness is easily removed by grief, calamity, hardship, or disease.

So, from a practical sense, the only fundamental human “right”, that cannot be deprived, is the right to die. Every other perceived human entitlement is a hope, desire, or vacuous platitude; or, an enforced slavery or indentured servitude.

Why do you think you have a “right” to my services in treating disease or illness? Do you think you also have a “right” to a haircut, a “right” to food, warmth or shelter? Are you able to drive into a gas station or Wendy’s and obtain fuel for your car or your belly without the willing exchange of value for these needs? Why would you think my training, expertise and effort should be your entitlement?

The whole notion of “health care” appears just the notion of an insurance policy you obtain for free. It is not a guarantee of care.

Keith Stampher

Colorado Springs

Idea not too far-fetched

In a recent cartoon two individuals are questioning why, our president, with all the problems our country is having, why would our country be interested in buying Greenland?

Not as far-fetched as one might think when you think of the military strategic location of Greenland and the unknown source of resources that have not been developed.

Who knows what is below the ice and snow of Greenland? No one with any certainty!

One needs only remember Seward’s Folly when in 1867, Secretary of State William Seward made a deal whereby the United States reached an agreement to purchase Alaska from Russia for a price of $7.2 million. This is admittedly the best real estate deal in the history of the universe.

My research indicates Greenland in not interested in selling, however, who knows what the future will bring.

Jan Gilmore

Colorado Springs

Ambulance 02.JPG (copy)The Gazette file