Groundbreaking NBC News Survey

This is a study by NBC news, investigative journalist Liz Wagner. Liz, I met when I was advocating for first responders as she was doing this research and she did an incredible job highlighting the issues first responders face 77% of firefighters won’t get help due to stigma 71% never receive mental health training and 90% believe awareness will lead to more resources.

So, by highlighting this data, I’ve talked with people in corporate America. I’ve talked with people across all sorts of different industries and people feel very similar that this data represents their industry as well if they had a study of their industry or within a large company that perhaps these numbers would be somewhat reflective just based on the fact that managers haven’t had training on mental health and you know as far as people on senior leadership roles perhaps they haven’t had it unless they’ve gone through some personal experiences or have a degree in psychology.

So, here we are we’re in a society where we need more training. When we need more awareness around mental health but we also need to Understand that, it’s okay to not be okay. It’s okay to ask for help and nobody should ever have to fear losing their job but unfortunately, It’s a reality. People do lose their jobs. People are seen after they speak out about their journey maybe they choose to go public and talk and advocate on different things. They see discrimination when they go for a new job and these things need to change because everybody is one bad accident, one bad day away from potentially having some sort of trauma response that requires help and It’s just about being human doing the right thing for the men out there.