Detroit Officers Cope With Stress of the Job

The Detroit News

Greg O'Dell was a respected law enforcement official and a married father of two when he drove his car to a residential street in Scio Township two days before Christmas last month, got out, and killed himself.

O'Dell, 54, the chief of the Eastern Michigan University Police Department, never told his colleagues he suffered from depression. Now, a month after his death, the department is trying to move forward while struggling to understand why a man who seemed to have it all would take his own life.

"He never let on that he had any issue," said Bob Heighes, Eastern's interim police chief.

In the past month, three men from public safety careers have died of suicide in southeast Michigan. Some public safety officials say it highlights the chronic stress law enforcement officers face and the challenges of persuading them to get help.

On Jan. 6, Daniel Armitage, an Ann Arbor firefighter whose wife had been hospitalized with domestic abuse injuries, lay down in traffic on Interstate 696 and was killed. Three days later, a border patrol agent stationed in Gibraltar killed himself in the parking lot of a Trenton hospital.

Studies show police officers have a higher suicide rate than the public. About 140 to 150 police officers kill themselves each year, or 17 per 100,000, according to Badge of Life, a group of active and retired police officers, medical professionals and surviving families of suicides from the U.S. and Canada. The rate for the general population is 11 per 100,000.

"Police officers are human," said John Violanti, a research associate professor at the University of Buffalo who has studied the suicide rates of police, military personnel and firefighters. "They not only have to put up with life's usual struggles, they also have to put up with this job that exposes them to death, human misery, abused kids. They can't get rid of this baggage, and it eats at them."

Violanti, a former New York state trooper, studied data of suicides by police officers, firefighters and military members from the National Occupational Mortality Surveillance database from a 15-year period, 1984-98 - more recent data is just now being added to the system, he said - and found police officers had the highest percentage of deaths from suicide, or 3 percent. For firefighters, the figure was 2.6 percent and for military personnel, 2 percent.

More recent data is being added to the database, which is based on death certificates from 28 states, he said.

Michigan, which wasn't part of the database, doesn't have a breakdown of its suicide rate as it relates to law enforcement personnel. But white working-age men - a demographic that dominates many police and fire agencies - had the highest per capita suicide rate, 20.4, in 2009, the last year for which figures were available from the Michigan Department of Community Health.

The state's overall rate, which has gone up 6 percent since 2004, was 11.7 suicides per 100,000 people in 2009.

"While youth suicides and elder suicides have been declining - and that's where the attention has really been - the suicide rate among working-age adults has been going up," said Pat Smith, violence prevention program coordinator with the state health department.

"That's very concerning, because that's not where a lot of attention has been put."

Jean Larch, a crisis intervention specialist at the Macomb County Crisis Center, coordinates a Survivors of Suicide support group that meets twice a month.

Fighting the stigma

Larch said there's such a stigma attached to suicide that "it's tough for people to tell someone they're suicidal."

Larch wrote a book about suicide with Bev Cobain, whose cousin, rock star Kurt Cobain, killed himself in 1994. She calls it a "myth" that those who die by suicide are "selfish people."

"They're suffering," she said. She also calls them "masters of deception," which is why their death often blindsides survivors.

"What you'd hear is they're the last person in the world" who would die of suicide, Larch said.

According to Heighes, the interim EMU police chief, only O'Dell's wife and one close friend knew about his depression.

This month, Heighes had a departmentwide meeting, at which a university psychologist discussed O'Dell's death and employees shared their emotions.

Police agencies often have a culture that discourages officers from being open about problems.

"There's a macho-ness in the job, whether you're male or female," Heighes said. And for those struggling to cope, some worry if they get help, it could "put your job at risk," he said.

Police officers are less likely than most to find healthy ways of managing stress, according to Violanti, instead turning to "escape avoidance" and "distancing."

That's why confidential off-site employee counseling is important, said Violanti, who believes training to develop "self-care" skills should begin at the recruit level.

Some departments also have peer support programs.

Learning to deal with stress

The Rev. James Friedman, chaplain of the Eastpointe Police Department, said a lot of departments and even police academies now understand the need to train officers to cope with the chronic stress that comes with the job. Friedman coordinates a critical stress management class through Macomb Community College's criminal justice program that teaches people, not just emergency personnel, to identify certain stressors.

"An officer goes to a traffic stop and it's a fatal accident. And you have a young mother and a child and the officer has to do his job. What people fail to realize is that officer is a human being too," he said.

"He may have a child the same age."

Badge of Life advocates more training for police; voluntary, private annual mental health checks with a therapist; an emotional self-care training program; and a suicide prevention program.

"For every police suicide, there are a thousand more officers out there, still working and suffering from undiagnosed PTSD" (post-traumatic stress disorder), the group's website says.

"And there are still another thousand suffering from anxiety, depression, substance abuse and other maladaptive behaviors."

EMU's Police Department, with 33 sworn officers and 45 total personnel, offers a confidential off-campus employee assistance program, Heighes said.

He said "what ifs" and "whys" still crop up about O'Dell's death, but "we have to move forward."

"It's what Greg would've wanted," he said.

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Warning signs

Talking about wanting to die or kill oneself.

Looking for a way to kill oneself, such as searching online or buying a gun. Talking about feeling hopeless or having no reason to live.

Talking about feeling trapped or in unbearable pain.

Talking about being a burden to others.

Increasing the use of alcohol or drugs.