‍A conversation with Robert Avsec, Operations Chief of the Fire Service Psychology Association.‍

Firefighters' mental health directly impacts operational effectiveness, team safety, and career longevity. According to the annual FireRescue1.com survey, 46% of firefighters consider leaving their current department reporting their own organization as their biggest stressor. It’s time to treat mental health with the same strategic importance as physical fitness and equipment maintenance - and to deploy the same level of systematic monitoring that has transformed physical wellness in the fire service.

Okaya CEO Gregory Menvielle recently sat down with Retired Battalion Chief Robert Avsec, now with the Fire Service Psychology Association, to discuss the challenges that Fire Chiefs have around the mental health of their teams. Having dedicated more than 26 years to Chesterfield Fire and EMS in Virginia, where he rose through the ranks to become Battalion Chief, Robert has a somewhat atypical profile as compared to most fire officers with a deep and eclectic frontline experience in emergency response, incident command, operations management, and firefighter training. He makes a strong case that leaders must think differently: mental readiness isn’t about fixing firefighters after the fact - it’s about equipping them to perform under pressure in the moment.

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The Cultural Competency Gap

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Q: What's the biggest barrier preventing firefighters from seeking mental health support?

Avsec: Everyone talks about stigma, but that's actually number two. The biggest barrier is the lack of culturally competent clinicians. Too many firefighters spend their first therapy session or two trying to explain what they do to their therapist. And unfortunately, there have been too many encounters where the therapist winds up in tears. That's not a good situation.

Part of the problem is there's not a  good understanding of what psychology really is, and that psychology is like a toolbox with many different tools in it, that  depending on what your particular need is, you need different approaches.

The American Psychological Association has a Division 18, which is Psychologists in Public Service. There's about six or seven different sections covering everything from Psychologists in Correctional Facilities to Police and Public Safety. When you look up Police and Public Safety on the APA website, there's no mention of firefighters.

People often lump us together with law enforcement or the military, but we're different animals. Police and military have the legal authority to take life. Firefighters swear an oath to protect life at all costs. Law enforcement officers are trained from day one to be a single resource - like the old Texas Ranger motto, "one riot, one ranger."

Firefighters are taught from day one how to operate as a team. You don't do anything on the fire ground alone. There's always at least two of you, and the vast majority operate as a team under the direction of a company officer. Your life depends on your team, which is exactly why mental health support is so critical for us.

Firefighters live and work together in the same place for 24 hours or more - that's not a typical workplace. A fire station is often said to be the hardest place in the world to find some peace and quiet. The culturally competent clinician–from a fire service culture perspective–is one who knows and understands what firefighters do, why they do it, how they do it, and the conditions under which they do it.

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Leading by Example to Overcome the Stigma

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Q: What's your advice for fire chiefs who want to improve their department's mental health culture?

Avsec: Start seeing a therapist. And then tell your people that you're seeing a therapist. Continue to see a therapist on a regular basis. 

There's not a more pressure-packed job than that of a fire chief in today's environment. Each crew operates as a tight-knit family, but that bond doesn't always extend upward to the chief's office. Meanwhile, you're dealing with operations, budgets, new regulations, new legislation - all while being just one cog in the local government wheel.

Why wouldn't you see a therapist to maintain your mental health? That's the best preventive medicine I can give you as a fire chief. When your people see that the boss prioritizes mental health maintenance, it changes everything. 

The Atlanta Fire Chief, Rod Smith, opened his keynote at our 2023 FSPA conference in Atlanta with "I see a therapist." He explained that everyone in the department knows this, that he does it to keep his mental health good, and that he highly encourages them to do the same. That's what every fire chief needs to be communicating to their people.

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Trauma Risk Management: Towards a More Personalized Support

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Q: What's wrong with the current Critical Incident Stress Management approach?

Avsec: For years, the fire service has operated with the critical incident stress management model. You know, we have an event, we get everybody together, we talk about it, etc. CISM is based on Freudian theory that it's cathartic to talk and get it out. That might work one-on-one, but in a group setting, if I reveal my true feelings about how something is really affecting me, it could influence how other people think of me. That's not good.

Trauma Risk Management is interesting, there have been several research projects dealing with it and we have one going on right now with the San Francisco Fire Department and the University of California, Irvine. Dr. Kristen Weldon and Dr Wayne Boucher just provided training to the peer supporters at the San Francisco Fire Department, and now they're gathering data on how it works.

TRIM is a program developed by the British Royal Marines and that is now used by all U.S. military services, the Veterans Administration, and law enforcement across the UK. The principle is simple: if 10 people are exposed to the same traumatic event, after 30 days, eight will have successfully resolved any issues and two will still need support. After 60 days, typically at least one more will have recovered naturally.

Instead of pathologizing all 10 people, TRiM helps identify the one or two who need additional support. Here's how it works: 96 hours after an event, peer support sits down with people individually using a standardized checklist - are you having trouble sleeping, concentration issues, etc. That creates a baseline. After 30 days, we check the same list. If you're good, we're done. If issues persist, we check again at 60 days. Those who still struggle get referred for professional help. They don’t all have the same needs. 

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Strengthening Peer Support Programs

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Q: What are the biggest challenges with current peer support programs?

Avsec: Too many departments form a peer support team, check the box, and move on. There's often insufficient training, continuing education, and clinical oversight. My recommendation is to turn over your entire peer support team every five years through staggered terms. If you're doing peer support, you're being exposed to the same issues as everyone else in your department. Why should we expect you to handle this for 10-12 years without developing serious baggage?

Peer support people are not clinicians. Their job is to be intermediaries whose peers feel comfortable talking to, and to have tools to determine whether someone is on the right path or would benefit from professional help. Your protocol might include that if you get more than two phone calls from the same person, that person needs a referral - they've already gone beyond your scope.

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Operational Psychology: From Reactive to Proactive

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Q: Most people only think about psychology as crisis intervention. What are we missing?

Avsec: There are four domains: assessment, intervention, research, and operational psychology. Everyone focuses on intervention - that's reactive. But operational psychology is like performance coaching for operational readiness.

Fire officers and firefighters have to make split-second decisions, most of the time with limited or incomplete information, while responding to changing conditions. One of my FSPA colleagues up in Canada, Jamie Rychard, writes extensively about how we need to bring operational psychology into the training we do as firefighters - training how to make better decisions while under stress.

I use Tom Brady as an example. A reporter once asked what a sports psychologist does for him. Brady said the psychologist doesn't teach him to throw a football, but helps him understand what's going on between his ears. "The biggest thing is he's helped me slow the game down so I can see all the open receivers, see the cornerback waiting to make that interception. I still only have five seconds in the pocket, but I make the best use of those five seconds."

That's what operational psychology can do for firefighters - not teach you to put out fires, but help you slow the game down to make the best use of your limited time.

You take care of your physical health, and when you have a physical issue, you go see a doctor. How many times has the doctor told you, "I wish you'd come see me three weeks earlier - we could have fixed this when it was a small problem"? It's the same with maintaining your mental health.

We need to go back and develop the same consistency for mental health that we have for physical training - consistent training, education, and guidance for fire chiefs on how to develop good mental health programs in their departments that are not only reactive, but also proactive.‍

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Making It Measurable

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Q: How do fire chiefs justify the cost and measure success of mental health programs?

Avsec: Go back and read your history. What were your challenges when it came to physical health, and how did you overcome them? In the mid-to-late 1990s, the International Association of Fire Chiefs and International Association of Firefighters came together to address lung disease, heart disease, and obesity. They developed the Joint Management Labor Initiative for Wellness and Fitness.

If you've been successful with physical health programs, use those same justification methods for mental health. One approach is the "Neck Up Check Ups" program developed by Allison Fienning - an annual mental health assessment that provides baseline data, identifies trends, and helps departments track improvements year over year.

When we–Chesterfield Fire and EMS– instituted our yearly health assessments, the occupational health clinic that did the work for us was allowed to communicate trends to the fire department - no personal information, but aggregate data like how many people had identified cardiac issues, how many needed stress tests, what the results were. There was objective data that could be looked at from year to year to see how we were doing. I think you can do the same thing with the mental health aspect.

Success might mean identifying that a firefighter doesn't need a psychologist - they need to see a sleep doctor. Or helping someone with an autistic child at home get appropriate support so their mental capacity isn't already depleted when they arrive at work. When we do good assessments, we can help people identify what they actually need, whether that's learning better sleep habits, financial counseling, or professional therapy.

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Moving Forward

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The fire service has successfully transformed its approach to physical health over the past three decades. The same systematic approach can work for mental health: leadership modeling, culturally competent resources, proactive programs, proper training, and measurable outcomes.

As Avsec puts it, "Maintaining your mental health is just as important as maintaining your physical health. They're two sides of the same coin - and that coin is you."

Advances in new technologies over the last decade are changing the game and offering new ways to bridge the gaps. 

Okaya is an AI-powered platform designed to support high-stake professions and help firefighters and their leaders assess mental wellness and regain control through accessible and private support. It provides both individual insights and an overall picture of a team’s state of mind enabling to assess operational readiness and performance enhancement. 

Okaya is not therapy, and is not designed to replace the vital role of mental health clinicians or peer supporters. It doesn’t diagnose or treat. Instead, Okaya acts as an early warning system and a bridge: empowering firefighters to assess their mental wellness, stress and fatigue, recognize when they need support and making it easier to connect with the right resources.

For clinicians and peer teams, Okaya becomes a powerful ally. It can help inform who needs support before problems escalate, provide baseline data, and help track progress over time. Most importantly, they can help normalize mental health conversations in fire departments, reduce stigma and make firefighters more comfortable seeking the human expertise that only trained clinicians can provide.

The goal isn't to digitize mental health care - it's to use technology to get firefighters to the right support at the right time.

The Okaya team will be attending the 8th Annual Fire Service Psychology Association (FSPA) Conference, October 9-10, 2025. Come meet us to learn more about how AI can support your department's mental health initiatives.