Hello trusty friends!! Katelyn here! I am back with more information on the topic of mental health in emergency responders and also on the new topic of copyright, creative commons, and other issues that can arise from posting or getting anything from the web.
Emergency responders do so much for everyone each day, and as we are thankful for their continued services to the people, we often forget or do not even consider their health, especially mental health. Emergency responders, including firefighters, police officers, paramedics, emergency medical technicians, and others, experience life-giving and also traumatic things every day. There are definite stigmas surrounding mental health in general, and I think we can agree that it is important to break these down and open the conversation about it.
Emergency workers respond to the scenes and endure more trauma than do many civilians; there is a possibility that they experience mental health differently than ordinary civilians and and they need resources. We must make ourselves aware and spread awareness of the mental health of our emergency responders, lean on the facts, and search in a variety of places to find them. For more information on this topic or the campaign in general, look back to my two previous posts, Why the Mental Health of Emergency Responders is Important! and Where are the facts?!.
In regards to the many places to find information on the web, it is obvious that they will not all will be reliable or truthful. In my previous post, Where are the facts?!, I talked about a few good and bad sources out there for this specific campaign. This being said, we must continue to overcome challenges around deciphering these.
In a TED Talk called Protecting Twitter’s Users (sometimes from themselves), Del Harvey discusses the magnitude of Twitter, as an example, and the magnitude of ‘bugs’ and problems that can be present within it. In 2014, there were on average 500 million tweets posted each day around the world. And when your job (Del Harvey’s) is to protect people’s identities and accounts, an account being hacked or something else happening with a “one-in-a-million” chance, could actually mean 500 times per day! This magnitude is huge and should not be taken lightly.
The web in itself is on a much larger scale than Twitter, and therefore copyright/identity issues are nearly commonplace. Lawrence Lessig talks a lot about copyright and creativity issues in his TED Talk, Laws that choke creativity. People today share their creativity in a variety of ways, including remixing music and combining previously created and posted ideas.
There are disagreements about what is ‘pirated’, or illegally copied, and what falls in the category of common sense, in talking about things on the web (Lessig, 2007). Much of the information regarding mental health in emergency first responders has probably been shared and borrowed. In my surveying of the web, I have found so many useful sites and so much information on the topic, which has been so engaging! But I know that this topic in itself is not widely researched and the sources that provide information on resources to help with mental health, or that have statistics regarding it, probably can be found in other works, compiled many times.
These are only fair, however, if they are cited! But the line between common sense and copying is challenging and experienced often. We must be aware in our work and in looking at sources to see where their information really comes from and how it relates to others. The internet can seem like a can of worms sometimes, but it is informative and beautiful in many ways.
In addition to this blog, I actually created a Twitter account (@mentalhealthEM) related to mental health in emergency first responders where you can find a new fact every day, and a Facebook page (First Responder Mental Health Awareness Page) to find and share information on the same topic! Since I have done no physical research and am just sharing what I have learned and found about mental health and emergency workers through the surveying of sites, I am aware of how important it is to cite all of the sources I use, and ensure the copyright abilities of the pictures I post, etc. These things are critical on the web and in any copyrighted work to ensure credit goes to those it belongs to and that these people are reliable accounts as well!
Health of First Responders 