Peer Support Training

Sometimes it’s hard to truly assess our mental health, so we’ve developed a free tool to help. Use the self-assessment below to have an honest moment with yourself.

Compassion fatigue is the decreasing ability to empathize with and respond to others' suffering. Over time, the emotional strain of constant support can lead to exhaustion, emotional detachment, and numbness. In fact, Shannon’s own compassion fatigue and struggle to find support is one of the reasons Stack of Stones was started in the first place. This brief training will help you understand more about what CF is and how it might be impacting you. - 8 min

Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a course that taught you exactly how to protect your mental health?

Well hot-diggity-damn, here you go.

Shannon took what she learned from 1000s of client sessions and turned it into a straightforward, practical set of steps.

The course will teach you how to build a mental health protocol that is specific for your individual needs, all in six easy online lessons.

• Duration: Six modules, each is 30 minutes or less

• Cost: $99 (See Sarah if you would like to take this course)

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When you come home from a shift, do you feel snappy? Irritated? Tense? You want to connect with your family, but feel like you can't settle down and relax. You don't want to bring the tension of work back home with you, but you can't seem to shake it. You aren't alone.

Transitioning from work to home is a common source of tension for guardians. In this training we will discuss four ways to reset before walking in the door.

• Duration: 27 minutes

• Cost: $5

If you are a wildland firefighter, you know that getting actual rest during your off days can feel impossible. We don’t have a magic wand to completely fix the problem, but in this training we discuss some specific steps you can take to help.

• Duration: 31 minutes

• Cost: $5

This course is designed to empower fire department leadership to promote and support healthy, high-performing fire/EMS departments. Based on the framework from the Psychologically Healthy Fire Departments initiative, this course focuses on six key practices - member involvement, health and safety, member growth and development, work-life balance, member recognition, and effective communication - to facilitate member well-being and department functioning.

This course examines the cultural progress, future potential, and concerns surrounding behavioral health in the fire and emergency services. A variety of tools, resources, and programs to help those in need are also covered. This course is available through the NVFC’s Virtual Classroom and is free to NVFC members.

This course looks at all the roles a volunteer firefighter plays throughout their lives. From your role as an employee to spouse to parent to firefighter, how do you emphasize the importance, purpose, and balance of each role? Learn strategies for prioritizing each aspect of your life to help you achieve balance and time management. This course is available through the NVFC’s Virtual Classroom and is free to NVFC members.

This course is about the process of adapting well in the face of adversity and trauma. Resilience is a crucial ability for first responders to help them stay in the game and retire emotionally and physically healthy. Modules cover six key skills based on ground-breaking science as well as how to lead a resilient fire department. This course is available through the NVFC’s Virtual Classroom and is free to NVFC members.

This course focuses on how to develop a team or workplace culture that fosters resilience. We recommend that teams take this course after working through the other courses. Participants will learn:

• How a team can become stress injured

• The Stress Injury Equation, with focus on Depletion, Mission, and Traumatic Stress

• Concrete actions that can help foster a culture of resilience

• How to create and follow an Operational Resilience Plan, as a roadmap to success

Families can be a great source of support for fire, EMS, and rescue workers, so it is important they understand what their loved one is experiencing and how they can help. This course educates families and friends of first responders on the impacts of the job on mental health and what they can do to support their loved one. This course is available through the NVFC’s Virtual Classroom and is free to all for a limited time.

This course examines the signs and symptoms preceding suicide, highlights available resources for departments and individuals, and discusses the healing process when coping with a firefighter suicide. This course is available through the NVFC’s Virtual Classroom and is free to NVFC members

When it comes to mental health concerns for first responders, healthcare professionals, and deathcare professionals - trauma is the winner. It is something we all carry if we do this work, but what do we do about it? The first step it to understand a bit more about what trauma actually is - this brief training will give you a quick overview. - 7 min

Moral injury is one of the most un-noticed mental health risks of the job if you work as a first responder or in healthcare/deathcare. It is subtle and sneaky. The brief training below will teach you what it is and how to assess for it. - 4 min

If you find yourself increasingly frustrated with the people around you, it’s time to have a little chat about burnout. In this training we will review the symptoms of burnout and some steps you can take to avoid it.

• Duration: 27 minutes

• Cost: $5

When you serve as a guardian, it can be challenging to know how much to share when you get home. You don’t want to traumatize your significant other, but it would also be nice if you can describe your day. This training breaks down specific steps for how to share - in a way that you can tailor to your specific relationship and needs.

• Duration: 22 minutes

• Cost: $5

It happens to the best of us. Our list of responsibilities grows. Our budgets and schedules get tight. And the fun just fades away.

Don't worry, if I just described you, you aren't alone. But we do need to do something about it, because having fun is core to good mental health. In this training, we walk through some key questions to help you re-discover what "fun" looks like in this phase of your life.

• Duration: 27 minutes

• Cost: $5

The Psychologically Healthy Fire Departments: Implementation Toolkit (Second Edition) is designed to help fire department leaders promote and foster well-being among their members. Having a healthy and engaged workforce creates successful, high-performing departments. The toolkit covers the six key categories of member involvement, health and safety, member growth and development, work-life balance, member recognition, and effective communication. Each category is examined along with specific actions that can be taken, special issues to consider, case studies from successful departments, and additional resources. The toolkit was developed in collaboration with psychologists, including members and staff of the American Psychological Association.

Although mental health resources are getting better, the stigma  is still strong.

If you are in the beginning stages of building a wellness program, take some time to watch our free 30-minute training on changing the culture of your organization.

Adding resources doesn’t work if no one will use them, so we need to be thoughtful and strategic about battling the stigma.

The Psychological First Response course provides concrete actions anyone can take to quickly appraise need for psychological care, and administer it in a meaningful way. It's designed for easy, field-based application.

Participants will learn:

• How to size-up a scene and appraise a patient

• An ABCDE mnemonic for providing quality care to anyone experiencing distress

• How to document and provide continuity of care

• How to protect and support the rescuer after these stressful events

This course provides common language and early recognition tools, to support long, vital careers. Participants will learn:

• How to use the Stress Continuum to recognize and communicate early signs of stress injury

• Characteristics of stress injury, including physical and relational impacts, to be aware of and mitigate

• How Green Choices can support a return to vitality and enjoying long, healthy careers

• How to use an Individual Resilience Plan to customize, plan, and track easy interventions for mitigating stress early

This training provides a novel framework for managing Potentially Traumatic Events (PTEs). The Incident Support Framework is the first of its kind to align dynamic support with individual needs.

It was developed based on extensive scientific literature showing that historic post-incident methods may unfortunately do more harm than good. Through expert analysis and years helping teams manage major incidents, we've developed this framework to make sure each responder's needs are met.

Participants will learn:

• How to recognize events that are potentially traumatic

• Use of the Incident Support Tool to appraise exposure at the end of an incident

• How to determine which responders need support, and how much support to offer

• Use of the 3-3-3 Protocol to provide lateral support in the days, weeks, and months post-incident

• When to refer a partner or colleague on to clinical care

This course examines PTSD and types of substance abuse frequently seen in the fire service, how PTSD can relate to substance abuse, and how to get help through the NVFC’s Share the Load Program. This course is available through the NVFC’s Virtual Classroom and is free to NVFC members.