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 Eye movement therapy helps first responders with the harsh reality of their jobs

By Holly Zachariah

The Columbus Dispatch

Posted Mar 31, 2020 at 4:32 AM

There is a growing awareness in the first-responder community that the men and women who help us in times of crisis often need help themselves. Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing therapy, generally called EMDR, has in recent years exploded as a treatment and resource for them. Longtime police officer and paramedic Jon Nessel knows its success first-hand.

The scent of sage adds a sense of calm to the room, and three small lamps cast a soft glow. The high-backed office chair looks inviting and comfy. Yet when Jon Nessel sits down, he cannot relax. One jeans-covered knee bounces, the heel of his work boot tap-tap-tapping against the floor. The sunglasses he fidgets with suddenly seem more interesting than the psychologist beside him. He cracks every knuckle.

Brian Barkett leans in and asks Nessel what memory he wants to work on today. Nessel offers just one word, the name of a baby girl who died during his recent emergency room shift at a Columbus hospital.

 Barkett begins: “OK. Where’s the damage?” “That I couldn’t save her,” Nettles answers.“What would you rather have in your mind?” Barkett asks this time. “That I did my best,” Nessel said. “OK, good,” Barkett says. “Let’s go with that.”

 A couple of more questions, then Barkett hits a switch and a small blue dot pops up on the screen of the iPad that is positioned on a stand in front of Nessel. From the upper left corner to the lower right corner the dot travels. Back and forth. Back and forth. Back and forth. A pause. A few more probing questions. Then quiet, and the dot starts sliding diagonally again. Nessel follows it with his gaze.

 This is eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, a psychotherapy that’s been around since at least the 1990s but one that has exploded in use in recent years, especially for those suffering trauma. 

EMDR, as it is commonly called, isn’t easily explained. Barkett boils it down like this: While specific memories are in our brains, the rapid eye movement helps stimulate and synchronize the frontal and temporal lobes, retraining the brain to dim the memory and help our bodies recognize it is no longer an immediate threat. And that allows our natural fight-or-flight instinct to tamp down. The fear disappears.

Nessel doesn’t care why it works. He just knows that it does. A 52-year-old former police officer who worked Chicago’s roughest South Side precincts and now serves as a paramedic/firefighter and lives in Granville, he’s found the treatments have faded his ugly memories, reduced his nightmares, eased his anxiety.

 “It’s not normal to push on somebody’s chest and hope they get their life back. It’s not normal to look at a child’s face and watch the light in their eyes go out,” Nessel said. “This,” he said of EMDR, “lifts the fear and the pain away from me.”

Some clients — those with a recent, single trauma, like experiencing a personal assault or witnessing a violent crash — might only need one session. For those with old, lingering or repeated traumas, it can be more.

Dr. Brooke Donaldson deals with both. A former EMT/firefighter, she is now an emergency room physician at Genesis Hospital in Zanesville and a trauma doctor for the LifeFlight emergency medical helicopter service. No day is routine. Every moment in her work schedule is life or death. And a couple of years ago, while on an anniversary trip with her husband, it all came crashing down. “I was at my breaking point, at the brink of suicide,” the 34-year-old doctor said. “I needed help.”

 A fellow firefighter recommended she try EMDR. She’s been having regular sessions for almost a year now. Sometimes, she said, she leaves Barkett’s office feeling renewed, relieved and unburdened. Other times, when the traumas they have been discussing are long suppressed and deep, not so much. “We work through childhood traumas that have never been explored,” Donaldson said. “That’s complex and takes more time.”  She is a leader in the movement to normalize things for doctors, nurses, paramedics and law-enforcement officers needing help.

 Donaldson will in May move to Licking Memorial Hospital in Newark, and part of her duties will be establishing a peer-based team focused on helping medical professionals focus on self-care and coping with trauma. “People don’t get what we go through. Even our families don’t get it,” she said. “But we are starting to break that gap.”

 EMDR can really be done with simple tools: waves of the hand, the iPad dot, a moving light. But experts insist it is not hypnosis.  An article written in a respected science magazine in 2012 explained how it was growing in use even then and likened it to the reset that happens during deep sleep (the REM, rapid-eye movement stage.)

“In conjunction with their therapists, EMDR clients also learn to replace negative thoughts (such as ‘I’ll never get this job’) with more positive thoughts (such as ‘I can get this job if I try hard enough’),” the story in Scientific American said.

 Barkett has embraced the method for decades. “We’re living in an increasing winner-takes-all society. Push, push, push, push,” he said. “After a while, your energy shifts to threat perception, that the world is a dangerous place. And your brain gets tired of being on guard. And a tired brain means depression. We have to learn to reset.”

 For Nessel, that means welcoming any therapy that takes care of his heart, mind and soul. “A friend told me ‘What you do isn’t normal. No one wants to hear your stories,‘” he said. “People tell us all the time ‘You did a great job.’ But yeah, the person I tried to save is dead. We need help to reconcile that. We need help.”

 hzachariah@dispatch.com

@hollyzachariah

Help coming for the helpers: First responders summit teaches cops, firefighters how to deal with stress

By Holly Zachariah

The Columbus Dispatch



Posted Nov 17, 2019 at 8:47 AM

As suicide rates for firefighters and police officers rise, more attention is being paid to what can be done. To advance the conversation, Central Ohio Technical College in Newark convened a First Responder Mental Health Awareness Summit this past week. More than 130 first responders learned that it’s OK to ask for help for themselves when feeling overwhelmed, and they heard from agencies that can help.

NEWARK — It was the car crash — the one in which the dad had been texting and crossed the centerline, killing his little girl — that finally pulled the string that started the unraveling of Jason Hufford’s soul. He took the heartache of that crash and piled it on top of images from so many other tragedies over the years: the fatal fires, the babies abused by parents, the crime scenes, the suicides, the bicyclists hit by cars. And it proved too much for the Newark firefighter. “In 2017, my wheels came off my bus in a bad, bad way,” he said as he stood alone on a stage in front of about 130 other law-enforcement officers, firefighters, paramedics and dispatchers from across Ohio who had gathered Wednesday for Central Ohio Technical College’s inaugural First Responder Mental Health Awareness Summit.

Hufford’s descent began with nightmares. That led to doses of Benadryl to force sleep. The medicine led to bourbon. And the bourbon led to hell. “There were days I thought about taking a gun and going out back,” the 47-year-old told the now silent crowd. “But I thought, ’Who’s gonna raise my kids? And the guys who have to come find me? Now, they’ll have to carry that trauma. What about my family?”

So Hufford sought counseling and various treatment programs. It saved his life. He was at Wednesday’s summit to give testimony and to advocate for seeking help, especially in a professional culture in which asking for assistance might be viewed as a little more difficult than in most. “We’ve buried our head in the sand about the trauma and stress that first responders suffer for years,” said Kevin Reardon, a retired Columbus firefighter and director of the college’s Institute for Public Safety. “It used to be, if we were hurting, we’d get a kick in the butt from our lieutenant who said, ‘Get over it. Move on.’ ”

The statistics tell the story: Though specific numbers vary by source, curation from a host of studies shows that at least 115 firefighters and emergency medical service workers nationwide died by suicide in 2018 and at least 150 law-enforcement officers killed themselves. And experts believe that only about 40% are reported, meaning the actual number is far greater. For both classifications, those numbers exceed the numbers of personnel killed in the line of duty. At least 10 New York City police officers have died by suicide this year, sparking a renewed national conversation about the stressors of the job. And closer to home, the Columbus Division of Fire has had its own rough year, with at least two suicides within the division.

Those rates paint only part of the picture, said Kenneth Yeager, clinical program director of the Stress, Trauma and Resilience program at Ohio State University’s Wexner Medical Center. He said a survey of firefighters and emergency medical services workers across Ohio last year showed that more than half suffered from depression, about 48% deal with “unexplained anger” and almost 20% have substance abuse issues. Trauma for first responders often isn’t from a single critical event, but instead accumulates over time, he said. “It’s the death by a thousand paper cuts,” Yeager told conference attendees. “What do you do with all you’ve seen? What do you do with all that you bring home? Who takes care of you?”

The Columbus Division of Fire has found a new sense of purpose in answering those questions, said Lt. Dave Gerold, supervisor of the members support unit. The division this year created a new in-house program centered around self-care and resiliency. About 300 supervisors and officers took the training that wrapped up last week. Now, the focus will shift to battalion chiefs and then to the 1,500 or so members of the division.

The goal? “To reduce the stigma ... and spread the message that you can only pick up rocks and put them in your backpack for so long,” Gerold said. Columbus police Cmdr. Rhonda Grizzell, who leads the division’s new wellness bureau, and attended the summit, is responsible for tending to the health — in all of its forms — of some 1,850 sworn officers and more than 250 civilian employees. She oversees the division’s peer support group, with more than 100 officers professionally trained to help their colleagues in a safe and confidential way. She said the conversation sparked by the rash of suicides in New York City has been a beneficial one to bring a total picture into the public’s clear view. “I want to use that momentum,” she said. “People aren’t calling the police because they’re having a good day. They’re calling us because they’re in crisis. That takes a toll.”

If you or someone you know needs help, reach Ohio’s 24/7 Crisis Text Line by texting 4HOPE to 741741, or call the Franklin County Suicide Prevention Hotline at 614-221-5445; or the national Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255/TALK.

hzachariah@dispatch.com @hollyzachariah

Granville psychologist uses new technologies

Emily Maddern,

The Newark Advocate

Published 7:59 p.m. ET Nov. 23, 2014

GRANVILLE – Dr. Brian Barkett will never forget the encounter that changed his life and his psychology practice forever. He was attending a conference on linguistic programming in 1999 when a presenter asked for a volunteer to demonstrate how Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing therapy worked. EMDR uses a patient’s rapid eye movements to weaken the effect of emotionally charged memories of past traumatic events.

Dr. Barkett had never come across EMDR in his practice and was curious, so he raised his hand to volunteer. It so happened that he had been experiencing a personal problem as a result of a traumatic event between a close friend who had betrayed him. He was asked to think about the traumatic event while tracking a series of lights with his eyes. After 15 to 20 minutes, Barkett said, the negative feelings he had were no longer there. Barkett couldn’t believe it. He decided to get trained in the therapy and began offering it to his patients in hopes it could be as life-changing for them as it was for him.

“Most problems come from an overreaction and exaggeration of fear and threat. Once you realize the threat is in the past, those traumatic memories will fade and your brain will no longer send the alert,” Barkett said. EMDR therapy helps patients do just that. Barkett initially graduated college with a degree in history but decided to go back to school to study psychology. He took a few courses at Ohio State University and then transferred to Xavier University, where he received a clinical master’s degree in psychology. Barkett later attended Spalding University in Louisville, Kentucky, to obtain his doctorate.

Barkett spent the first 12 years of his career practicing traditional therapies, but EMDR has revolutionized his practice for the better, he said. Although it is still a fairly new type of therapy, Barkett has seen the positive effects it has not only on himself but also his patients, and he thinks it will soon be a mainstream form of psychotherapy. He also uses a NeurOptimal machine to perform EEG neurofeedback. The machine looks for instabilities within the electromagnetic fields in a patient’s brains and helps stabilize them in real time. Studies have shown that traditional talk therapies can be extremely effective in treating mental health problems, but EMDR and neurofeedback can reach patients on a deeper level and treat them much quicker, Barkett said. “When people come to me, they just want something that works. This isn’t some miracle cure, but it gets results,” he said.

Carla McCarthy first met Barkett when the two became neighbors. She was feeling an increase in stress in her life and had been having trouble sleeping, so she reached out to Barkett to see whether he could help. He recommended the NeurOptimal, and although she was skeptical at first, McCarthy signed up for six sessions. Soon after she started, McCarthy began noticing subtle changes in the way she was responding to stress and was sleeping more soundly. “I felt like there was this barrier to get to that overreaction,” she said. She has since begun working with Barkett as a practice development assistant and will begin training for neurofeedback certification soon.

Barkett loves the work he does every day. Helping people move past their traumas and retrain their minds to better respond to stress and anxiety has been very rewarding, he said. “When you change someone’s life, it’s really cool,” Barkett said. “Especially when it’s someone older who thought their life would never change. It’s so fulfilling.”

emaddern@newarkadvocate.com 740-328-8513 Twitter: @emmaddern

About This Series “Aces of Trades” is a weekly series focusing on people and their jobs — whether they’re unusual jobs, fun jobs or people who take ordinary jobs and make them extraordinary. If you have a suggestion for a future profile, let us know at advocate@newarkadvocate.com or 740-328-8821.

Better Minds Group Dr. Brian Barkett uses non-drug brain training technologies to help treat patients for anxiety, depression and other problems. His office is at 941 River Road, Suite B, in Granville. For more information, call 740-404-9588.