2022 Fire Service Psychology Association Conference
CONFERENCE WILL BE HELD VIRTUALLY. Please join our meeting from your computer, tablet or smartphone.
OCTOBER 7, 2022
We are pleased to announce some exciting presentations for our virtual conference on October 7th, 2022. There will be 6 continuing education units (CEUs) awarded for the conference. The Fire Service Psychology Association is a nonprofit organization developed to bridge the gap between professional psychology and the fire service. We believe through effective firefighter-specific training and intervention; we can develop and maintain psychological health for years to come. Founded in 2017, our organization is located in Southern California although we offer services to fire agencies across the country. Our mission is to provide the best standard of psychological care for fire service personnel and their families.
REGISTRATION IS NOW OPEN
2022 CONFERENCE LINEUP
8:00am-8:15am: Opening Statements
8: 15 am-9:45 am: Unique Psychological Dynamics Impacting Wildland Firefighters (Marilyn Wooley Ph.D.)
9:45am-10:00am: Morning Break
10:00 am-10:45 am: Multidimensional Approach to Peer Support (Cheryl Low-Singapore Civil Defence Force)
10:45 am- 11:30 am: Hiring for Excellence: Selecting Personnel for Specialized Teams (Singapore Civil Defence Force- Cherie Goh)
11:30am-12:30pm: Lunch
12:30 pm-2:00 pm: Career vs. Volunteer Firefighters: Differences in Perceived Availability and Barriers to Behavioral Health Care (Michelle Pennington)
2:00 pm-3:30 pm: Panel Discussion: US Fire Service in a Post Pandemic Era with Curt Varone, Jeff Dill, Carla Moore
3:30pm-3:45pm: Closing Statements
3:45 pm-4:00 pm: FSPA Annual Award Recognition- Psychologist of the Year/ Fire Service Leader of the Year
Meet Our Speakers
List of recent publications:
- Wooley, M.J. & Smith, S. (June 2022). Reaching rural police: Challenges, implications, and applications. Crisis, Stress, and Human Resilience: An International Journal, (4) 1.
- Wooley, M.J. (2022). How Heroes Heal: Stories of First Responders and the Journey from Posttraumatic Stress to Posttraumatic Growth. Wild Wooley Publications.
- Wooley, M.J. (March 2022). Providing CISM Where the Deer and the Antelope Play: Adventures and Insights from Far-Northern California. LIFENET, (33) 1.
- Wooley, M.J. (June 2021). How Personal Experiences with Wildfire and Lessons Learned from CISM Helped Me Become a Better Therapist. LIFENET, (32) 2.
- Wooley, M.J. (2020, Summer) Wildland Firefighters: Healing Outside the Box. Trauma Psychology, 15 (2), 5-7.
- Wooley, M.J., (July 2020). Prepare, Adapt, Implement: Cultural Adventures in CISM. LIFENET, (31) 2.
- Wooley, M.J., Powell, Shawna, Loew, M. (2019, December). How to survive a firestorm and empower more resilient wildland firefighters. Crisis, Stress, and Human Resilience: An International Journal, 1(3), 171-182.
If I had to pick only 3, they would be:
- Wooley, M.J. (2022). How Heroes Heal: Stories of First Responders and the Journey from Posttraumatic Stress to Posttraumatic Growth. Wild Wooley Publications.
- Wooley, M.J. (2020, Summer) Wildland Firefighters: Healing Outside the Box. Trauma Psychology, 15 (2), 5-7.
- Wooley, M.J., Powell, Shawna, Loew, M. (2019, December). How to survive a firestorm and empower more resilient wildland firefighters. Crisis, Stress, and Human Resilience: An International Journal, 1(3), 171-182.
Marilyn Wooley, PhD is the author of How Heroes Heal: Stories of First Responders and the Journey from Posttraumatic Stress Injury to Posttraumatic Growth (WildWooleyPublishers, 2022). Wooley is a police and public safety psychologist and traumatologist who has provided treatment to cops, firefighters, communications dispatchers, medical personnel, other first responders, and veterans suffering from posttraumatic stress injuries for the past forty years. She completed her PhD in 1977 from the University of Arizona and performed her postdoctoral training at the Long Beach Veterans Medical Center treating young veterans injured and traumatized during the Vietnam War. Her experiences spurred her interest in the development and treatment of posttraumatic stress.
Marilyn’s passion became even more deeply rooted when, in 1992, she discovered a trunk filled with her grandfather’s effects from WWII. By exploring hundreds of his letters and photographs, she discovered that her grandfather had served in the 7th Army and was a liberator of Dachau Prison Camp. Suddenly, she realized that her grandfather’s gruesome experiences had left him suffering from untreated posttraumatic stress disorder and her interest in PTSD became an obsession. The diaries illuminated Wooley’s troubled family history and she was struck with fresh clarity how her clients’ individual experiences with posttraumatic stress not only shaped their lives but influenced and shaped the lives of their families and children. Her therapeutic goal of reducing the effects of PTSD eventually led her to devote her energy to helping first responders embark on a journey from posttraumatic stress to recovery to posttraumatic growth that would ultimately reclaim and enrich their lives.
Wooley began private practice in Redding, California in 1979. Over the years she sought opportunities to gain experience in the treatment of posttraumatic stress and related disorders. She became an instructor in Critical Incident Stress Management education and provided services to numerous law enforcement, fire, emergency medical services, government agencies, private companies, and medical facilities.
In her work, she witnessed the positive changes associated with posttraumatic growth in hundreds of first responders. Over time, she recognized a pattern similar to the Hero’s Journey archetype in classic mythology described by Joseph Campbell, and she took classes detailing the Writer’s Journey developed by screen writer/author Chris Vogler. Her conceptualization of the “hero’s story” helped her understand her clients’ struggles. When she began to share this story with the first responders she treated, they began to see their recovery as an adventure, not the one they experience in their daily life, but a journey inside, both terrifying and inspirational. posttraumatic growth, when described as a series of challenges, becomes normalized and helps the first responder negotiate the path to recovery in a more understandable way.
Wooley has published articles in professional journals and presented papers at conferences describing critical incidents, including her own, and the coping/recovery process. She is an expert witness in several areas relating to trauma. She volunteered for the American Red Cross to help victims of 9/11. She has also volunteered as a clinician for the West Coast Posttrauma Retreat since 2001 and served on the board of the First Responders Support Network.
Writing about public safety is not Wooley’s only genre. She won the 2000 St. Martin’s Press Malice Domestic award for Jackpot Justice, a novel about psychologist Cassie Ringwald who lives amid colorful characters and solves mysteries to save the lives of her clients.
Wooley lives in rural Northern California with her husband and a clowder of shameless cats. She enjoys an adrenaline rush and has survived skydiving over power lines, flying a small plane crippled by engine icing, scuba diving with sharks, kayaking 100 miles on Idaho’s wild River of No Return, and belly dancing at a biker bar. She also tends to her rose garden and attends opera whenever she can. She is hooked on murder mysteries and world travel.
Marilyn Wooley, PhD is a police and public safety psychologist and traumatologist who has provided treatment to cops, firefighters, communications dispatchers, and medical personnel suffering from posttraumatic stress injuries for forty years.
Wooley has published articles on posttraumatic stress injuries and recovery from critical incidents, including her own, in professional journals. Her latest book, How Heroes Heal: Stories of First Responders and the Journey for Posttraumatic Stress to Posttraumatic Growth will be available on Amazon in August 2022. Writing about public safety is not Wooley’s only genre. She won the 2000 St. Martin’s Press Malice Domestic award for Jackpot Justice, a novel about psychologist Cassie Ringwald who lives amid colorful characters and solves mysteries to save the lives of her clients.
Wooley lives in rural Northern California with her husband and clowder of shameless cats. She enjoys an adrenaline rush and has survived skydiving over power lines, flying a small plane crippled by engine icing, scuba diving with sharks, kayaking 100 miles on Idaho’s wild River of No Return, and belly dancing at a biker bar. She also tends to her rose garden and attends opera whenever she can. She is hooked on murder mysteries and world travel.
- Psychologist from the Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF) under the purview of Ministry of Home Affairs.
- Provide counselling for staff and manages a peer support programme within the organisation, including conducting of trainings.
Poh, H. W., & Diong, S. M. (2021). The role of psychologists in supporting Singapore’s urban search and rescue contingent in overseas missions. Crisis, Stress, and Human Resilience: An International Journal, 2(4), 168-172.
Mao, X., Fung, O. W. M., Hu, X., & Loke, A. Y. (2018). Psychological impacts of disaster on rescue workers: A review of the literature. International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, 27, 602–617. doi:10.1016/j.ijdrr.2017.10.020
Wright, N. A., & Foster, L. (2018). Improving disaster response through the science of work. International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, 31, 112–120. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijdrr.2018.04.026
Ms Cherie Goh is currently a Psychologist in the Emergency Behavioural Sciences and CARE Unit of the Singapore Civil Service Force. She graduated from the National University of Singapore with a Bachelor of Social Sciences in Psychology (First Class Honours). Cherie oversees the psychometric testing for personnel selection and recruitment for the SCDF. As a psychologist, she also provides psychological support such as counselling and critical incident debriefing for in-service officers. Prior to her current role, Cherie had worked at the Home Team Behavioural Sciences Centre conducting scholarship and high potential selection, leadership research and training, and also has experience in providing trauma-informed emergency management and crisis response after hours with the Child Protective Service at the Ministry of Social and Family Development. Her research interests include personnel selection and assessment, stress and coping, responder performance as well as resilience in frontline workers.
- Khader, M., & Goh, C. S. Y. (2020). Personality and Law Enforcement. In The Wiley Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences: Clinical, Applied, and Cross-Cultural Research (Vol. IV pp. 569- 573). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119547181.ch359
- Goh, C. S. Y. (2022). Job Competencies of DART in the Singapore Civil Defence Force. Poster presented at 5th Asian Conference of Criminal and Operations Psychology, Singapore
Brief Bio – Michelle Pennington, MPH
Michelle Pennington is a Program Manager for the Warriors Research Institute of Baylor Scott &
White Health where she manages the group’s fire service research projects. Michelle has been with the Warriors Research Institute since its founding in 2013. The Warriors Research Institute strives to improve the quality of mental health care available to first responders and veterans via a program of scientific inquiry.
In addition to her work with the Warriors Research Institute, Michelle is a Ph.D. Candidate at the University of Texas Health Science Center School of Public Health where she is working on a doctoral degree in Epidemiology. She also holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology and a Master of Public Health degree in Community Health Education from Baylor University. Michelle has worked on a variety of research projects related to firefighters and veterans examining topics including suicide, stigma, telehealth, and peer support. Her current research interests revolve around violence prevention in high-risk populations and those exposed to trauma as well as the psychiatric outcomes of violence and trauma exposure.
Career versus volunteer firefighters: Differences in perceived availability and barriers to behavioral health care.
Firefighters frequently place themselves at risk to provide critical services to the public, including responding to fires, medical emergencies, and natural disasters. As a result of their highly-demanding jobs, firefighters are often exposed to high levels of occupational and traumatic stress, both of which have been found to contribute to behavioral and physical health problems in firefighters. This presentation will describe findings from a large national survey of both career and volunteer firefighters aimed at identifying their access to behavioral health services. This presentation will cover differences in the availability of, and barriers to, behavioral health care between volunteer and career firefighters. Among other findings, volunteer firefighters were less likely to report the availability of formal services, but more likely to report the availability of peer support compared to career firefighters. Additionally, volunteer firefighters were over five times more likely to consider cost a barrier to accessing behavioral health services compared to career firefighters; however, they were less likely to report lack of support from leadership, fear of breach of confidentiality, and clinicians who are unaware of work culture as barriers. Interestingly, volunteer and career firefighters were equally likely to report stigma as a barrier. These findings have important implications for understanding how to strengthen departmental resources and design targeted interventions to increase access to behavioral health services.
At the end of this presentation, the learner will be able to:
- List services that are more commonly available for career
firefighters compared to volunteer firefighters. - Identify the greatest barrier to behavioral health care for volunteer firefighters compared
to career firefighters. - Compare barriers to behavioral health care for volunteer and career firefighters.
PANELISTS FOR PANEL DISCUSSION
TOPIC: US Fire Service in a Post Pandemic Era
In 2010, Jeff Dill founded Firefighter Behavioral Health Alliance (FBHA).
Jeff travels the United States & Canada holding workshops to educate firefighters, dispatchers & EMS about behavioral health awareness and suicide prevention. In 2010, FBHA began tracking and validating data on all FF, EMS and dispatcher suicides across the United States. In addition, FBHA offers seven workshops for first responders, counselors/chaplains, family members and preparing for retirement.
Jeff Dill holds a Master’s Degree in Counseling and is a retired Fire Captain at Palatine Rural Fire Protection District in Inverness, Illinois.
Jeff speaks internationally about his work for his brothers and sisters. In the past ten years, he has traveled over 750,000 miles. His message offers hope and inspires all to enjoy life by understanding their own behavioral health.
On July 1 st, 2021 Jeff was appointed the new Behavioral Health Administrator for Las Vegas Fire & Rescue.
CURT VARONE has more than 40 years of experience in the fire service, including 29 years as a career firefighter with Providence, RI, retiring as a deputy assistant chief (shift commander). He is a practicing attorney licensed in both Rhode Island and Maine, and served as the Director of the Public Fire Protection Division at the NFPA. Curt is the author of two books, Legal Considerations for Fire and Emergency Services, and Fire Officer’s Legal Handbook. He is a contributing editor for Firehouse Magazine and remains active as a deputy chief with the Exeter (RI) Fire Department.
Dr. Wheldon began her mental health career while working with children who had been diagnosed with developmental disabilities. She went on to further her experience within the community while serving as a school counselor with a private organization and a catholic school. Her forensic experience began within the Orange County jail system. Thereafter, she was hired with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, served as a Staff Psychologist, and was soon promoted to a Senior Psychologist Specialist. In those positions, she provided direct services to the inmate-patient population, worked alongside law enforcement officers, served as a Suicide Prevention Proctor Mentor, provided institutional training to both sworn and civilian employees, and was responsible for helping to develop policies and procedures within her institution.
She is the President & Founder of the Fire Service Psychology Association which is dedicated to bridging the gap between professional psychology and the fire service through providing APA-approved continuing education courses to mental health providers, behavioral health training to departments, and collaborating on research to better understand the needs of firefighters and their families.