Comstock's magazine 0620 - June June 2020 | Page 34

WORKPLACE HEALTH
Critical care nurse Heather
Donaldson, who works in the ICU
at the UC Davis Medical Center,
goes on long bike rides to help
cope with stress from work.
prevention crisis line it operates (which
answers calls to three lifelines, including
the National Suicide Prevention
Lifeline) increased by 40 percent between
February and March. WellSpace
answered 4,713 calls in March. The line
averaged 3,350 suicide prevention calls
monthly in 2019.
“People feel exceptionally helpless
right now, and those feelings are
translating to thoughts of suicide and
self-harm,” says Jonathan Porteus, a
psychologist and WellSpace CEO, in a
news release. “Anxiety in the community
is palpable. People are more isolated
as they try to cope with pandemic
fears, unemployment, financial stress
and increase substance use. Add more
time around firearms, increased rates
of domestic violence, and it creates a
dangerous paradigm.” Porteus advises
people to seek social connection
through virtual means.
While mental health experts say
everyone needs to practice self-care
during this pandemic, external support
can come from a social network of
people on a mission to help the helpers.
For example, as executive director
of Law Enforcement Chaplaincy
Sacramento, Mindi Russell oversees
around-the-clock rapid-response
teams that provide emotional crisis
support for people in the aftermath of
trauma, loss and grief. LECS works with
law enforcement agencies, school districts,
government agencies, businesses,
churches and other institutions.
Russell’s first major trauma experience
happened in 1972, as a volunteer
for the Red Cross for the Summer
Olympics in Munich, West Germany —
where she and her husband lived for his
stint in the Army — when a Palestinian
terrorist group killed 11 members of the
Israeli team and a police officer. She was
assigned to help a couple American athletes,
“although we were told they were
not allowed to talk about the massacre
or their fears. (We were) just to be with
them.” Three decades later, she worked
as a chaplain in New York for the first 16
days after 9/11.
Chaplains are considered essential
workers, and those under age
65 and using protective measures
remain deployed during shelterin-place
orders to assist people in
emotional or spiritual distress. “What
I am seeing is that it could be that a
loved one died, which is very traumatic
anytime, but now you filter
everything that happens to people
through COVID-19,” Russell says. “So
all the trauma, all the crisis, all the
tragedy is filtered through COVID-19,
which has exaggerated and distorted
and amplified more fear, more grief,
more loss, more trauma.”
LECS chaplains also work a 24-hour
hotline, which Russell says saw a spike
in calls on March 13, the day President
Donald Trump declared a national
emergency, which was two days
after the World Health Organization
declared the coronavirus a pandemic.
“This is when people started to go,
‘Wait a minute, this feels way more real
now,’” she says. “‘I’m more nervous, I’m
more concerned,’ and what happens
is they start thinking of the future and
play out worst scenarios. … If we can
bring people into the reality of they’ve
got a lot more control than they think,
and they can do a lot more energywise
putting it into the positive than the
negative, then they’re going to come
out of it on the other end.”
INCREASED NEED
FOR SUPPORT
In 2018, Gold River-based technology
company Cordico launched a customized
wellness app in partnership with
the Vacaville Police Department (see
sidebar, page 33). Founder and CEO
David Black, who is a psychologist, says
even before the pandemic began, his
company was growing, its apps used
by dozens of law enforcement agencies
34 comstocksmag.com | June 2020