SILIVE.COM
By Erik Bascome | tbascome@siadvance.com
Editor’s note: Suicidal thoughts and behaviors can be reduced with the proper mental health support and treatment. If you are in crisis, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988 or contact the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741.
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — Many of the New Yorkers who’ve dedicated their careers to saving their neighbors’ lives have at one point considered taking their own.
Police officers responding to a domestic dispute, but arriving too late to prevent an eventual murder-suicide. Firefighters valiantly battling blazes, but unable to save someone trapped inside. Emergency medical technicians (EMTs) transporting a critically-injured patient to the hospital, but seeing them die in their arms before they arrive.
Oren Barzilay, president of FDNY EMS Local 2507, the union representing New
York City’s EMTs, told the Advance/SILive.com that he has witnessed the
stresses of the job drive eight of his members to commit suicide since
2020.
“This is not your normal Monday through Friday type of job. It’s extremely
taxing and mentally draining the things that my men and women see on a
daily basis, which are violence against [senior citizens], violence
against kids, elder abuse, child abuse, rapes, gunshot wounds,
stabbings, physical assaults and death,” said Barzilay.
“They see death on a daily basis and it takes a toll on people, hence why we
see our men and women showing signs of PTSD, but they don’t have the
support and help they need,” he added.