People in public service professions tend to be “fixers,” Hamilton Fire Department Lt. Jason Callihan said Monday night. Unsolvable problems stick in their gears. For Callihan, that problem was the Dec. 28, 2015 death of colleague Patrick Wolterman. The true shock of it still wouldn’t hit until 2017, when he and others at the station realized how tightly they were gripping their pain.
The issue of suicide among first responders is not commonly talked about, but those with mental illness think it needs to become part of the job and training to look for warning signs.