Peer Support Education & Resources

Start here! Anyone can take the free online Behavioral Health Awareness course, which is also the prerequisite for the IAFF Peer Support course. 

You can also take advanced peer support courses in Safety Planning Intervention for Suicide Prevention and Disaster Response Peer Support (these two courses are required for PST Members).

https://www.iaff.org/behavioral-health/

https://www.iaffrecoverycenter.com/

This excellent webinar by Brandon Dreiman and Jeffrey Gauthier covers why sleep cycles are important and how sleep disorders impact fitness for duty and quality of life; they offer practical strategies for improving sleep, including sleep hygiene practices and an introduction to Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia (CBT-I). 

"In this webinar, Dr. Cherylynn Lee, a first responder psychologist, discusses how to identify Post-Traumatic Stress Injury and shares practical tools such as early intervention strategies, stress management techniques, and frameworks for creating a culture of proactive and responsive support within your organization.  

You’ll learn: 

• What stress, trauma, and moral injury are and how they contribute to post-traumatic stress injuries. 
• The indicators and symptoms of post-traumatic stress injury and how they manifest in our personnel. 
• To  understand the neurological roots of behaviors such as substance abuse,  infidelity, isolation and anger, and how to identify these indicators  in first responders. 
• How implementing wellness strategies and  programs for our personnel not only helps offset the negative impacts of  the job but sets up our workforce for post-traumatic growth."

The Center of Excellence hosts regular webinars on a variety of topics, including peer support, addiction, suicide prevention, trauma in the fire service, sleep (like the above webinar), and more. Archived past webinars are available at this link: