Mental Edge Mondays: What If Your Department’s Wellness Program Is Too Visible?

“Form a line here if you need treatment for herpes.”

Imagine putting that sign in the middle of the apparatus bay and then wondering why nobody gets in line.

You could have the finest herpes specialist in the world waiting just behind the door, gloved up and ready to start examining peoples’ tender parts.

You insist repeatedly that treatment is completely confidential. You tell everyone the department is committed to ending the scourge of herpes and has already paid for everyone’s medical care. Leadership has repeatedly assured everyone there’s no shame in having herpes. You might even put up posters featuring respected firefighters saying, “I got treatment for herpes, and you should, too.”

I’m guessing the line will still be pretty short.

This is an intentionally ridiculous example, but I sometimes wonder whether we inadvertently construct psychological wellness programs using a version of the same logic.

We create wellness initiatives, wellness days, wellness apps, behavioral-health trainings, mental health resources and special programs for people who are struggling. Then we work very hard to destigmatize using them.

All of this is well intended, and much of it is valuable. But the structure itself may be sending a message we haven’t fully considered.

This is where you go when you have a problem.

The Problem With Putting a Sign on It

Once we label something “mental health” or “wellness,” we help people decide what category it belongs in. For many firefighters, that category still has some association with struggling, having symptoms, needing help or not doing as well as they normally do.

This doesn’t necessarily mean firefighters are resistant to psychology.

The same firefighter who has absolutely no interest in attending something called a “behavioral health seminar” may spend an hour talking with a respected captain about how to stay sharp during a brutal stretch of calls, sleep better between shifts, handle conflict at home, or stop carrying operational intensity through the front door.

Same nervous system. Same relationships. Same psychology. Different door.

This difference matters because if we say we want to move psychological support upstream, but everything about how we package it signals it is intended for people who are already struggling, we may have built a downstream system with an upstream label.

Psychology Is Already Everywhere

The irony is psychology is woven through almost everything a fire department does.

It’s woven into how your best captain gives difficult feedback without unnecessarily humiliating someone. It’s the invisible force between a crew that develops enough trust to challenge each other without fracturing. It’s in the mix when someone gets promoted and suddenly has to understand personalities, conflict, motivation and human behavior in ways that were never part of learning how to fight fire.

It’s there when firefighters transition from an intensely activated call to kneeling down at eye level for a moment of connection with their six-year-old. It’s there in sleep, judgment, leadership, relationships, mentoring, team cohesion, recovery and the ability to remain sharp under sustained pressure.

We just don’t always call those things psychology. But it’s all psychology.

Imagine If We Did This With Physical Fitness

Imagine creating a new program called the “Physical Deficit Program.”

Let’s say you’ve created a special office firefighters can visit when they notice troubling signs of deconditioning. Posters assure them there is no shame in becoming winded on the second flight of stairs. A confidential hotline allows them to disclose that stairs have recently become more challenging.

Nobody would design physical readiness this way – it would be absurd to build this kind of program.

Physical conditioning is already woven into fire culture because it’s understood as part of doing the job well. You don’t have to become physically impaired before fitness becomes relevant to you.

Why should psychological performance be fundamentally different?

This doesn’t mean eliminating behavioral-health programs or making treatment resources harder to find. When someone needs treatment, the pathway should be obvious, trusted and easy to access. Excellent peer teams, clinicians, chaplains and treatment resources are critical. But psychology extends far beyond just the treatment setting.

Maybe Success Looks Less Like a Program

Perhaps the next evolution is to stop making all psychological expertise something firefighters have to opt into.

Some of it could simply become part of how great departments operate: how officers are developed, how crews function, how people prepare for predictable pressure, how difficult transitions are anticipated, how leaders think through complicated human decisions and how high performers stay high performing.

Police departments are actually more progressive in this sense. I can think of at least a few departments that have embedded a trusted Doc in this way. (In fact, there are a few that have embedded my expertise in exactly this way). But I haven’t seen the fire service adopt this model yet.

In this kind of model, nobody has to identify themselves as someone who “needs wellness” to benefit from psychological expertise. It’s already there, and the door to consulting with me is not a “clinical treatment” door – it’s an operational performance door.

The fire service has spent years trying to normalize psychological support, and this work has led to a positive evolution. But perhaps the ultimate form of integrating meaningful expertise is when some of this becomes so thoroughly woven into the culture that nobody thinks of it as a mental health intervention at all. What if this was just part of how excellent departments take care of their most important asset – their people?

So instead of asking: “How do we get more firefighters to use our wellness resources?”

Shauna ‘Doc’ Springer, PhD is a pioneering psychologist, award-winning Military Times podcast host, and one of the world’s leading experts on psychological trauma, moral injury, suicide prevention, close relationships and the unique needs of the military and first responder communities. Doc Springer provides highly specialized consultation and confidential advising to organizations and public safety agencies that support protectors and defenders through her company THIN LINE ADVISORY.