From Awareness to Implementation: What New York’s First Responder Mental Health Report Reinforces About Officer Wellness
The mental health crisis facing law enforcement officers and first responders is not simply a matter of individual resilience.
That is one of the clearest takeaways from the New York State First Responder Mental Health Needs Assessment, a statewide report that documents the stressors, barriers to care, and mental health challenges experienced across the first responder community. The report reinforces what The Howard C. Liebengood Foundation was created to address: the health and wellness of law enforcement officers cannot be separated from workplace culture, access to healthcare, leadership, policy, stigma, and trust.
For too long, conversations about first responder wellness have focused primarily on the individual: Are officers willing to seek help? Are they resilient enough? Do they have access to a hotline, an app, or a peer support contact?
Those questions matter, but they are incomplete. The more difficult and important question is this: Are the systems around first responders designed in ways that support health, encourage early care, reduce fear, and produce better outcomes?
The New York report helps answer that question with urgency.
The New York Report Shows the Scope of the Problem
The New York State First Responder Mental Health Needs Assessment was developed by the Benjamin Center for Public Policy Initiatives at SUNY New Paltz, in collaboration with the Institute for Disaster Mental Health and the New York State Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services. The assessment included a statewide survey of first responders and focus groups representing law enforcement, fire service, emergency medical services, emergency communications, emergency management, and administrative personnel.
The findings are significant.
The report found that first responders across the state reported substantial levels of work-related stress, burnout, anxiety, depression symptoms, PTSD symptoms, and suicidal thoughts. Many also identified major barriers to seeking care, including stigma, concern about being viewed as unreliable, fear of negative career consequences, fear that leadership would treat them differently, scheduling challenges, lack of time, and lack of culturally competent mental health providers.
These findings are not surprising to those who work in or alongside public safety, but they are important because they move the conversation beyond anecdote. They provide data that confirms what many first responders, families, clinicians, and leaders have known for years: the current approach is not enough.
More resources are needed, but resources alone will not solve the problem.
The Report Aligns Closely with HCLF’s Mission
The Howard C. Liebengood Foundation’s mission is to improve the health and wellness of law enforcement officers through interdisciplinary collaboration, education, and research. HCLF is committed to identifying opportunities to improve workplace health, access to healthcare, and health outcomes, while actively facilitating multifaceted solutions.
That mission is strongly reflected in the New York report.
Both the report and HCLF’s work recognize that first responder mental health is shaped by more than exposure to trauma. It is also shaped by organizational conditions: shiftwork, overtime, staffing shortages, leadership practices, peer culture, access to trusted care, policy uncertainty, and the fear that asking for help could create professional consequences.
This matters because a narrow focus on individual coping can unintentionally place responsibility on the person experiencing distress while leaving the surrounding system unchanged. Officers and first responders may be encouraged to “speak up” or “seek help,” but if they believe doing so could harm their reputation, duty status, career trajectory, or firearm-related responsibilities, the message will not translate into meaningful use of care.
Research supports this concern. Drew and Martin (2021) found that more than 90% of officers in a national U.S. study perceived stigma as negatively influencing help-seeking behavior. Even when officers had accessed support and found it useful, stigma remained a significant barrier. Richards et al. (2021) similarly found that law enforcement officers face multiple barriers to seeking mental health services, including confidentiality concerns, fear of job-related consequences, limited knowledge of available services, and cultural norms that discourage vulnerability.
The New York report confirms that these barriers are not abstract. They are operational realities.
From Assessment to Action
The New York report and HCLF are working in the same field of concern, but from different vantage points.
The report gives shape to what many first responders have been carrying quietly for years. It documents the pressures, gaps, fears, and barriers that influence whether someone asks for help, receives care, or continues to struggle in silence. In that way, the assessment functions as both evidence and mirror: it reflects the lived reality of first responders while giving leaders, policymakers, and agencies a clearer view of where systems are falling short. HCLF’s role begins where that recognition must become action.
The Foundation exists to help move these conversations out of isolated reports, internal meetings, and well-intentioned awareness campaigns and into the harder work of implementation. That means bringing together law enforcement leaders, labor, clinicians, researchers, policymakers, families, and people with lived experience to ask the next set of questions: What conditions are driving poor health outcomes? What barriers can be changed? What does meaningful access to care require? And how do we build systems that first responders can trust before they reach a point of crisis?
The New York report helps clarify the need. HCLF’s work is focused on helping the field respond to that need with evidence, collaboration, and practical action.
Together, they point toward the same conclusion: awareness is necessary, but it is not sufficient. The next phase of first responder wellness must be measured not only by what we acknowledge, but by what we are willing to change.
The Path Forward Must Address Access, Culture, and Trust
One of the most important themes in the New York report is that access to care is not only about whether a service technically exists.
Access depends on whether first responders know about the service, trust it, can use it without unreasonable logistical barriers, believe it is confidential, and feel confident that seeking help will not be used against them. This is why leadership is central.
A department can have a wellness program on paper and still have a culture where officers do not feel safe using it. A peer support team can exist, but if confidentiality is unclear or poorly understood, utilization may remain limited. A clinician may be available through an employee assistance program, but if that clinician does not understand first responder culture, the service may not be trusted.
Taylor et al. (2022) found wide variation in the availability of wellness programming across U.S. law enforcement agencies. Their national study showed that many agencies lacked comprehensive wellness programming, underscoring the need for stronger infrastructure and more consistent access to support. The issue is not simply whether individual officers are willing to seek care. It is whether agencies and systems have built the conditions that make care accessible, credible, and usable.
That requires attention to policy, leadership training, confidentiality protections, culturally competent care, peer support standards, and the practical realities of shiftwork and staffing.
Why “Awareness” is No Longer Enough
Awareness has helped reduce silence around first responder mental health. It has created more room for conversation. It has allowed more leaders to speak publicly about officer wellness, suicide prevention, trauma exposure, and the cumulative toll of the profession, but awareness is not the endpoint.
If awareness does not lead to implementation, first responders may continue to face the same barriers under a more polished message. They may hear that mental health matters, while still working in environments where overtime is unmanaged, staffing is strained, leadership is not trained, confidentiality is uncertain, and care is difficult to access.
That gap between message and reality is where trust is lost.
The RAND Corporation’s review of first responder and law enforcement mental health and wellness research emphasized the need for stronger evidence, better evaluation, and more attention to implementation. Labriola et al. (2025) found that stigma, confidentiality concerns, limited time, resource constraints, lack of leadership support, and lack of awareness all affect the success of wellness programs. Their findings reinforce a central point: wellness initiatives must be designed, implemented, evaluated, and improved within the real-world conditions of public safety organizations.
In other words, the question is not only, “What program should we offer?” The better question is, “What system are we building?”
A Systems-Based Response to a Systems-Shaped Problem
The New York report points to several promising strategies, including peer support, culturally competent clinicians, wellness checks, paid time to seek care, physical health supports, policy-level discussions, and leadership engagement.
These strategies align with HCLF’s systems-based approach. They also reflect the reality that no single intervention will solve a complex problem. A hotline may help in crisis, but it cannot replace prevention. Peer support may build trust, but it cannot substitute for clinical care when clinical care is needed. Leadership training may improve culture, but it must be reinforced by policy, accountability, and consistent practice.
A systems-based response recognizes the connections between:
workplace culture and help-seeking;
leadership and trust;
staffing and burnout;
policy and access to care;
confidentiality and utilization;
physical health and mental health;
research and implementation;
officer wellness and public safety.
This is the work ahead.
Moving from Insight to Implementation
The New York State First Responder Mental Health Needs Assessment provides a clear call to action. It confirms that first responder mental health challenges are widespread, that barriers to care remain significant, and that solutions must address more than individual resilience.
For HCLF, the report reinforces the need for exactly the kind of work the Foundation was created to advance: interdisciplinary collaboration, education, research, and systems-based solutions that improve workplace health, access to healthcare, and health outcomes for law enforcement officers.
The next phase of first responder wellness cannot be limited to raising awareness. It must focus on action and implementation.
That means helping leaders understand the organizational conditions that shape mental health. It means building trusted pathways to care. It means supporting policy conversations that reduce barriers rather than reinforce them. It means listening to first responders and families. It means using research not only to describe the problem, but to guide action.
Most importantly, it means recognizing that the health of first responders is not separate from the health of the systems in which they serve.
Officer wellness is a public safety issue. First responder mental health is a workforce issue. And the path forward requires more than concern. It requires coordinated, evidence-informed, systems-level action.
References
Drew, J. M., & Martin, S. (2021). A national study of police mental health in the USA: Stigma, mental health and help-seeking behaviors. Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology, 36(2), 295–306. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11896-020-09424-9
Jacobowitz, R., Nitza, A., Tobin, K., & Hazard, J. (2025). New York State first responder mental health needs assessment: Final report. Benjamin Center for Public Policy Initiatives, SUNY New Paltz; Institute for Disaster Mental Health; New York State Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services. https://www.governor.ny.gov/sites/default/files/2025-02/First-Responder-MHNA-Final-Report.pdf
Labriola, M. M., Donaghy, J. P., Keyes, T., & Kang, S. J. (2025). First responder and law enforcement mental health and wellness research development. RAND Corporation. https://doi.org/10.7249/RRA2268-1
Richards, N. K., Suarez, E. B., & Arocha, J. F. (2021). Law enforcement officers’ barriers to seeking mental health services: A scoping review. Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology, 36(3), 351–359. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11896-021-09454-x
Taylor, B. G., Liu, W., & Mumford, E. A. (2022). A national study of the availability of law enforcement agency wellness programming for officers: A latent class analysis. International Journal of Police Science & Management, 24(2), 175–189. https://doi.org/10.1177/14613557211064050