November 10, 2016 – In his 31 years with the police, Sergeant Mark DiBona has experienced a flood of human tragedies. But it was the death of a baby ten years ago that broke him inside.
DiBona was sitting in his patrol automotive at 3 a.m. when a mother pulled up screaming that her six-month-old son had stopped respiration. Firefighters from a close-by station were on their technique to a call, so DiBona tried to perform CPR on him. But the infant died of sudden infant death syndrome.
“I felt worthless because I couldn't save the baby despite my training, and I tried my best,” he says.
After attending the infant's funeral, the nightmares began.
The baby appeared in nightmares: in his mailbox, on the dinner table with him and his wife, within the passenger seat of the police automotive.
In a nightmare, the doorbell rang and DiBona answered and was surprised to see the infant lying in front of his door. “He was lifeless,” says DiBona. “I started CPR again and woke up drenched in sweat, screaming and yelling. I just felt guilty because I couldn't save the baby.”
During the day, DiBona was tormented by obsessions, feelings of guilt and shame – negative feelings that continued to accentuate. He isolated himself from the opposite officers.
Like soldiers and veterans, cops value being tough, and admitting to having post-traumatic stress disorder is difficult. “It takes a lot for police officers to talk about their inner feelings because we don't want to be judged or we're afraid our gun will be taken away. We might lose our job,” DiBona says. “I bottled it all up inside and told very few people what was going on.”
Since he wasn't a cop, even his wife couldn't really understand, he says. For DiBona, escape involved heavy drinking and binge eating. He gained 40 kilos, stopped shaving commonly and showed as much as work in a wrinkled uniform.
Although a single traumatic event can trigger PTSD, so can chronic trauma, akin to the gruesome events cops, firefighters, and other emergency responders face on the job. According to a study that checked out PTSD and cops, roughly 7 to 19 percent of lively cops suffer from job-related PTSD. The number can be even higher if officers with post-traumatic stress disorder were included, but whose symptoms are usually not severe enough to warrant a proper PTSD diagnosis.
DiBona says he, too, was sexually molested as a boy, and researchers know that childhood trauma – actually any early trauma – increases the chance of later post-traumatic stress disorder.
The risks may be high. Police officers with PTSD may take their very own lives. DiBona knows 4 police officer friends who committed suicide. All showed signs of PTSD, he says.
He almost joined them. One night he wrote a farewell letter to his wife, mother and colleagues and desired to shoot himself. “I felt completely useless. I had to commit suicide so that my pain would go away and hopefully God would understand why I did it because I felt like a failure,” he says. But he stopped when he considered his wife finding his body.
Shaken, he finally sought help. He was diagnosed with PTSD and depression, but DiBona struggled to seek out a therapist until he found one who was a former police officer. She understood how PTSD and depression had robbed him of the sense of strength and confidence that was so essential to his life.
“She's helped me get back on track and feel a lot better. There are days when I don't want to get out of bed or go to work, days when I just want to sit at home. She says, 'You have to do your work, you have to get back the strength you once had,'” he says.
In addition to therapy, he takes medication for PTSD and depression and attends a support group with eight retired and lively cops.
During therapy, he also learned respiration and leisure techniques that help him ease the anxiety he suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder. Now, when he gets nervous while teaching infant resuscitation to students on the police academy, he breathes to calm himself down.
Ten years later, he still has occasional nightmares concerning the baby. Some of the triggers are still there. He still gets tense when he hears the news of an infant's death, when he goes on a medical call, or when he drives past the hearth station where the infant died.
As a part of Badge of Life, a police mental health program within the United States and Canada, DiBona now speaks to cops and other first responders about PTSD, depression and suicide.
“When I started telling my story, I spoke out of anger. I was very upset because no one understood what I was going through,” he says. “Now I use a lot of humor and make fun of my job as a police officer.”
He recommends that every one cops voluntarily undergo an expert physical examination yearly. Police officers who’re distracted by post-traumatic stress disorder pose a danger to themselves and their colleagues, he says.
“I am telling my story now to give strength to people who have similar problems to me.”