Stony Brook to launch new program designed to help first responders cope with PTSD

Jason Hoffman can vividly recall arriving at a Bay Shore intersection roughly a decade ago to find a 5-year-old child, who had been struck by a hit-and-run driver moments earlier, unresponsive in her mother's arms.

Hoffman, an EMS supervisor at Stony Brook University Hospital, had only seconds to convince the distraught mother to release her severely injured child into his care, unsure if she'd ever see her daughter alive again.

While the child survived and recovered from a traumatic brain injury, the episode still haunts Hoffman, who wonders what he could have done differently to provide the girl with a better outcome.

'Keeps you up at night'

"It keeps you up at night, thinking what could I have done better," said Hoffman, 43, of Bay Shore, who relies on the support of close friends and regular exercise to deal with the trauma of his challenging job. "You wake up to nightmares, reliving that scene and seeing the face of the patient again. You question your decisions in the future on calls that are similar. It all brings back those traumatic memories."

A new worker-resiliency training program, operated by Stony Brook Medicine and set to launch next year, is designed to help first responders such as Hoffman manage the stress and trauma they experience, often on a day-to-day basis, while helping them to prevent or recover from cases of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Stony Brook, working alongside the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research at Northwell Health and an affiliated team of researchers from Texas A&M University, is expected to recruit about 800 first responders, including firefighters and EMS workers, for a five-year, large-scale study.

Dr. Adam Gonzalez, head of the study and a professor in the Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University, said the study relies on a four-hour interactive workshop that educates first responders about the physical and mental health effects of PTSD, while providing them with the tools to deal with the traumatic exposures they experience out in the field.

"We want to equip the responders with coping tools to manage traumatic stress in a more effective way," said Gonzalez, whose father is a retired NYPD officer. "We go over healthy lifestyle behaviors, eliciting the relaxation response. And responders are able to leave the workshop with essentially a personalized coping plan for themselves."

Program recruitment begins in early spring from fire stations and EMS organizations on Long Island, Westchester and Rockland counties, and in the Houston area of Texas.

Teaching responders to manage stress

Dr. Rebecca Schwartz, from Feinstein’s Department of Occupational Medicine, Epidemiology and Prevention, will lead the study’s data collection, including physiological measurements tracked via a Fitbit, while assisting with recruitment. The WRT program itself was developed by National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences and the Substance Abuse Mental Health Services Administration.

"It’s so important, because, especially now post-COVID ... their roles are getting much more stressful," Schwartz said of first responders. "The opioid epidemic has really had an impact on our first responder group. They're responding sometimes to the same people in the same communities, time and time again. It is extremely stressful."

The training program is funded by a five-year, $3.3 million grant from the National Institutes of Health that runs through June 2030.

Gonzalez and Schwartz are looking to build on an earlier clinical trial they ran of 167 first responders conducted in the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy.

Results of that trial, Gonzalez said, showed the program's techniques were successful in helping first responders manage stress, prevent PTSD and depressive symptoms and develop healthy lifestyle behaviors compared to a control group.

"First responders are exposed to traumatic stress, for some, on a daily basis in terms of seeing homes destroyed or seeing dead bodies or people severely injured," said Gonzalez, who also serves as principal investigator and founding director of the Mind-Body Clinical Research Center in Stony Brook’s Neurosciences Institute. "So, they’re an at-risk group for PTSD, in particular, and for mental health concerns."

If the program is successful, Gonzalez said, it could be expanded to include law enforcement officials and eventually grow nationwide.

Industry experts said the focus on first responder mental health is long overdue.

A 2024 study by the American Ambulance Association found the attrition rate among EMS personnel was between 23% and 40% — among the highest of any professions — with a 38% turnover rate in the first year of employment.

For decades, Hoffman said, the expectation was that first responders should "suck it up" and quietly deal with the stressors of the job.

"That was the old-school mentality," he said. "But now, with more of a spotlight on mental health for first responders, it's more like, 'Stop; pause; say something and reach out for help.' It's great to see that change in the community."

By Robert Brodsky

robert.brodsky@newsday.com@BrodskyRobert

Robert Brodsky is a breaking news reporter who has worked at Newsday since 2011. He is a Queens College and American University alum.