Executive Summary Overview
In April 2018, The Ruderman Family Foundation published a white paper on the subject of mental health and suicide rates of first responders. In the more than three years since that report came out, the severity of mental health challenges, and the tragic prevalence of suicide among first responders has not changed unfortunately. Indeed, the situation has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic along with increased public scrutiny and media coverage driven by police shootings. These front-line workers have faced mounting stress and isolation. Together these factors have led to a wave of resignations and retirements from law enforcement agencies (MacFarquhar, 2021). This report presents updated data for 2020 and 20211 and seeks to raise awareness of the fact that problems and gaps in service exposed in our 2018 report have not received effective treatment and continue to affect the mental health of first responders. While suicides for the general population have decreased during the pandemic (Johnson, 2022), this update reports that there has been moderate to no decrease in suicides for all types of first responders in the year 2020. Although there has been a decrease in suicide in the general population, the trend among first responders remained unchanged. If COVID-19 follows the pattern of similar tragedies, such as Hurricane Katrina, there could be a rise in suicide in the future (Ehlman et al., 2022).
We saw a slight decrease in first esponder suicides from 2017 to 2020. Though this is in line with trends from the general public, the numbers are only growing as more cases become verified In addition, following the pattern of similar tragedies there could be a rise in suicides in the future (Ehlman et al., 2022). 1 Data for 2021 is still being updated. The verific tion of if a death is considered suicide can be a long process, and this number might increase over time as more information comes available.
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