Years ago, when Rachael Peterson was working as a police officer, she sought out a therapist to help her process some personal and professional traumas, only to realize pretty quickly that she and that counselor were not a good fit.
“She didn’t have any concept of the kind of things police officers face on a daily basis,” Peterson said. “Because of that, I was not comfortable with her.”
Today, in her work as a consultant, therapist and educator specializing in the needs of police and other first responders, Peterson leans into her deep understanding of the distinct and troubling world of law enforcement officers. She knows better than most what kind of approach people in the profession need to support their mental health. She also knows what they don’t need.
“When police officers go to a therapist, if they don’t get a sense early on that they can talk about traumatic or disturbing things, they will feel like it is unsafe for them to talk,” Peterson said. “It takes a different approach and a different tactic than a typical therapist might use to gain a client’s trust.”
Peterson has been a key part of the early planning process for a specialized program funded by a new, two-year $150,000 grant from the Minnesota Department of Public Safety. The funds, which will be distributed in two $75,000 chunks to the Minnetonka-based Adler Graduate School, will be used to provide tuition assistance and develop curriculum for a 24-week program that will train licensed therapists to understand the nuances, cultures and stressors of the work environments of law enforcement officers and how to provide effective treatment when these professionals are in distress.
Peterson said the training will give practicing therapists added knowledge and a deeper understanding of law enforcement professionals and first responders — knowledge that is sorely lacking in the state’s mental health workforce.
“Understanding that police in particular, more so than other first responders, don’t trust anyone, especially therapists, is especially important,” Peterson said, “so teaching therapists ways to earn the trust and respect of police is crucial for them to help officers get the help they need.”
A deeper understanding
Peterson believes there is a mental health crisis among police in Minnesota — and across the country. “Nationwide, almost 35% of folks in law enforcement meet the criteria for PTSD in their lifetime,” she said. This leads officers to leave the profession, she added. “We’re down 1,100 officers in the state of Minnesota,” she said. “I would say the vast majority of those are related to mental health.”
The new training, Peterson said, is “so powerful.” Instructors will include a mix of mental health and law-enforcement professionals, and classes will focus on real-life scenarios and building a deeper cultural understanding of the trauma many law enforcement professionals have endured.
Providing mental health care to police officers isn’t always easy, Peterson said. “Most therapists went to school and learned, ‘I’m going to absorb and take in a lot of trauma.’
The type of trauma that police officers witness can be intense: suicides, shotguns to the head, dead bodies.” This reality is not something that all therapists can handle easily, Peterson added. “Having that skillset to honor those experiences while not getting freaked out by them is really critical. We have our own subculture in law enforcement,” she said. “We talk differently. We have a lot of different lenses we look at the world through.”
[image_caption]State Sen. Steve Cwodzinski[/image_caption]
“Last year, this group of therapists came to me and said they don’t have the training needed to deal with people who go through these horrible experiences on a daily basis,” Cwodzinski recalled. “Most of us kiss our loved ones in the morning and go off to work. Not in a million years do our significant others think we’re not going to come home that night. For our police officers, that is a significant issue.”
Cwodzinski has a history of advocacy for first responders, including supporting a 2020 bill that secured workers’ compensation payments for those affected by the COVID-19 crisis. In April 2021, he scheduled a police ride-along in the Twin Cities. Coincidentally, it was the day the George Floyd verdicts were announced.
At first, Cwodzinski asked if the officer wanted to cancel the ride-along, but he recalled the officer telling him, “‘This will be a good way to see what we go through.’” When Cwodzinski arrived at the police station, he said, “they put me in a bulletproof vest. I had a guy from the National Guard protecting me and the officer for that night. The ride was six hours long. [The officer] was so tense the whole time. I asked him, ‘When you go home to your family, how do you shut this off?’”
Experiences like that led Cwodzinski to craft a bill requesting funding for a Law Enforcement Mental Health Training program. The goal of the grant is to provide training to some 150 licensed, practicing therapists, Cwodzinski explained. Some will receive tuition support. “That’s $1,000 per therapist who can help police officers get past that image of, ‘I don’t have any emotions. I’m a robot. I don’t talk about these things with you,’” he said. “If we can get 100 police officers to get beyond that, if we can save a few lives of police officers, it’s money well spent.”
‘Checkup from the neck-up’
Some police departments are already providing comprehensive mental health care for their officers. At the Minnetonka Police Department, for instance, three times a year officers have a “check up from the neck up” — mental health check-in and screenings that help officers and their supervisors get a sense of their well- being while providing support for any concerns. It also sends the message that checking in on your mental health is just as important as checking on your physical health. Peterson conducts these screenings in Minnetonka and at more than 20 other agencies.
[image_caption]Minnetonka Police Chief Scott Boerboom[/image_caption]
“I think in general there is a stigma around mental health, regardless of your profession, but specifically with police,” Boerboom said. This discrimination and misunderstanding about the impact of trauma on workers’ mental health can set law enforcement personnel up for a struggle from the start, he said. “Officers wear many different hats and they respond to different situations and sometimes they are not the best suited to respond to that particular Situation,” he said, “but they are the first ones there so they have to step in. It can be a struggle. It can be hard on your mental health. Young officers don’t always know what they are getting into.”
Lisa Venable, a retired Adler Graduate School adjunct professor and Law Enforcement Training Program project coordinator, said she and her colleagues hope this program will not only help educate therapists on the unique mental health needs of law enforcement officers but also help to break down misinformation and mistrust among the officers themselves.
“We hope to normalize the idea that counseling or therapy is an important part of making sure our officers are doing self-care and addressing any challenges they are having in their families,” Venable said.
Future impact
Program organizers hope that by the end of 2025 they will have given a significant number of Minnesota therapists a deeper understanding of the unique mental health needs of police officers. By that time they will also develop and distribute a directory of professionals who have completed the program to state law enforcement organizations.
So far, Venable said, “The response from mental health professionals around the state has been quite high. We have a waiting list [for this program]. We were surprised there was so much interest and willingness to be part of this.”
She explained that the program’s overarching goal will be to deepen her colleagues’ understanding of the daily lives and mental health challenges faced by police officers. “I had no idea that this was what their profession was really like,” she said. “You just think they are out there protecting us or even shooting people. But there is so much we don’t know until we really start listening and talking to people.”
Venable hopes that the news that a new crop of therapists have been armed with that deeper knowledge will spread to law enforcement officers and the agencies that employ them. She wants to deepen trust between police and mental health professionals.
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“Trust is a big determinant of whether police officers seek out help,” she said. “If they don’t address these issues, that leads to them leaving the profession or to addiction issues or a variety of challenges that can impact their police work, their family lives, their marriages.”
Cwodzinski agrees. He wants the benefits of this program to eventually help everyone in the state. “If you are unhappy at work for whatever reason, your interactions with your species are not going to be as productive,” he said. “If you are happier at work — I’m not trying to say therapy will make police officers into Pollyannas — if you have someone to talk to after a bad day, you are much more likely to have productive, healthy interactions with the citizens of Minnesota.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to remove an incorrect reference to Adler Graduate School being for-profit. It is a nonprofit. The story has also been updated to remove an incorrect reference to the law creating a competitive grant program.
