I stepped off a bus in Sana’a, Yemen, and my nerves rattled after an intense eight-hour ride through a country I knew almost nothing about. As I took in my surroundings, reality sank in—I was not in the safest place. A crowd of men had gathered outside the bus, and it looked like a protest was on the verge of turning violent.
I was 23 years old, trying to make my way back home to Canada after 18 months of working and traveling the world. The last stretch of my journey had been nothing short of uncommon—I had hitchhiked on a sailboat from Singapore to Yemen, planning to catch an easy flight home. Fire departments back in Canada were finally hiring again after a long lull, and I couldn’t afford to miss my chance.
“I Need Help”—The Hardest Words to Say
Believe it or not, research states that asking for help is one of the most difficult things a person can do [1] . I learned this firsthand by stepping off that bus. And later in my firefighting career—when I needed help the most—I found it just as challenging.
Halfway through the bus ride, the police had stopped us, holding us at the side of the road for over two hours. They checked everyone’s passports, and as the only foreigner, I was singled out, questioned, and asked to hand over multiple government documents. A few local men were removed from the bus. Then we waited. Eventually, a military escort arrived—six vehicles, including a jeep with soldiers and a top-mounted machine gun. With sirens blaring, they escorted the bus to the capital, Sana’a.
Standing in the street, watching the bus disappear, I realized something unsettling: the military escort was for me. A week earlier, Al-Qaeda had kidnapped a group of foreign travelers in Yemen. When the military attempted a rescue, all the hostages were killed. I had no safety net. The crowd around me was growing, and I could feel their eyes on me—a lone Westerner stranded in the middle of a tense situation in a country where Al-Qaeda operates. I needed help, and the options weren’t great. I spotted a line of taxis up the street. I had a choice: push forward and ask for help, or stay where I was, completely exposed. I tightened my grip on my backpack, kept my head down, and walked straight through the mob, my heart pounding.
The first taxi driver I approached didn’t speak English. This was 2009—Google Translate didn’t exist, and my flip phone was useless. My first attempt failed. I turned to the only other driver I could find and asked, “Airport? Please.”
He nodded. That single “yes” changed everything. He got me out of there, waited until I was safely inside the airport, and left only after he was sure I was okay.
Suffering in Silence
Years later, when I was analyzing the findings of my white paper, Heroes Are Also Human [2], an international study on the current state of mental health in the fire service, this story kept resurfacing. Fire chiefs repeatedly spoke about stigma, their concerns about firefighters suffering in silence, and the difficulty of asking for help. Our study found that 64% of departments had seen an increase in firefighters taking leave, with the majority of departments seeing psychological injury surpassing musculoskeletal for the reasons of these leaves. Many chiefs were aware of firefighters in their departments who were struggling. But they also had great concern for those suffering in silence.
This isn’t new. Many of us have seen it firsthand—firefighters who go through something difficult but never say a word. We’ve heard the stories of those who do speak up, sometimes only after things have hit rock bottom. The truth is, taking a leave or seeking help isn’t always tied to the calls and traumas of the job. It can be personal—divorce, family stress, substance use, physical health issues. But regardless of the cause, the common theme remains: it takes a lot for a firefighter to ask for help.
Breaking the stigma starts with leadership, and while the fire service has made significant progress in recognizing mental health, there is still work to be done. Most departments now have peer support and wellness programs, but the reality is that many are still in the awareness phase, raising visibility but not yet embedding mental fitness into daily operations. We have yet to fully transition into the operational phase of mental health, where training, leadership, and action make a measurable impact.
Currently, most fire departments (86%) offer mental health programs only once or twice in a firefighter’s career, making these efforts far from consistent. In contrast, other aspects of firefighting training are reinforced regularly to ensure preparedness and skill retention. Given this gap, it’s no surprise that many firefighters struggle to ask for help—after all, we can’t expect confidence in an area where training is minimal and inconsistent.
- Trauma-Informed Peer Support: The Missing Connection
- Will You Raise Your Hand?
- Maintaining Mental Health: Resources for Firefighters
Leaders Set the Tone
One of the biggest barriers? Lack of leadership examples. Our research found that only 2% of departments provide dedicated mental health training for their administrative staff. This isn’t to say there aren’t great leaders out there—there absolutely are. But when it comes to mental health, are we leading by example, or are we just expecting firefighters to figure it out on their own?
The reality is that raising your hand and asking for help is hard, really hard. It’s even harder when you feel like you’re the only one. Many senior firefighters today started in a culture where vulnerability was seen as weakness. Even some chiefs admitted during our interviews that they struggle with opening up about their own mental health, fearing how they’d be perceived by their crews. This is definitely changing as we are see more and more raise their hands, but there is still a stigma that needs to be overcome.
Firefighters operate in a culture of courage, where our entire job is about doing hard things that no one else will do. Running into burning buildings is hard. Rappelling down a structure with precision rigging is hard. But all these things get easier when someone else goes first.
The same applies to mental fitness. If the senior firefighters on your crew openly talk about mental health, participate in regular mental fitness practices, and integrate wellness tools into their daily routines, it sets a new standard. Asking for help becomes normal, not exceptional.
But if no one talks about it? Then, no one talks about it.
*
I won’t sugarcoat it—asking for help was the hardest and most rewarding thing I’ve ever done.
After a particularly tough call—pulling a woman from a house fire, her burned skin sticking to my gear—I went home and lost it. The following day, I snapped at my family, screamed at my wife, and, in a moment I’ll never forget, pushed my four-year-old son.
That call wasn’t the cause. It was the tipping point. I knew I needed help. Within six days, I had spoken to a therapist, done a breathwork session with a practitioner, and tried neurolinguistic programming (NLP). When I returned to the fire station, I didn’t go into the personal details, but I told my crew the call had messed me up and shared what I had done to process it. Some listened quietly. Others looked uncomfortable. But they all listened.
In the weeks and months that followed, crew members started asking me about breathwork and even shared personal struggles of their own that they had never shared before. I even found some guys meditating and trying breathwork in the gym. This is how change happens. One person speaks up, and it opens a door.
When I stepped off that bus in Yemen, I was terrified. In that moment, it felt like no one could help me. The same feeling hit me years later after pushing my son. I knew I was in a bad place. I had two choices: ask for help, or let it get worse.
Stepping into the unknown is terrifying. But here’s the thing—as a firefighter, you’re already great at it. You do it every time you go to work. This is just another call—only this time, it’s about you. And like most calls, the sooner you make the decision to act, the more we can help.
Asking for help is one of the hardest things you’ll ever do. Good thing you’re a professional at doing hard things.
REFERENCES
[1] O’Toole, M., Mulhall, C., & Eppich, W. (2022). Breaking down barriers to help-seeking: Preparing first responders’ families for psychological first aid. European Journal of Psychotraumatology, 13(1), 2065430. https://doi.org/10.1080/20008198.2022.2065430
[2] Evans, Brandon. Heroes Are Also Human: An International Examination of Mental Health in the Fire Service and Its Impact on the Emotional Well-being of Firefighters. Brampton, Ontario: Self-published by Fire to Light, 2024
Brandon Evans is a retired firefighter from Brampton, Ontario, Canada, with 15 years of experience in the fire service. He is the founder of Fire to Light, which focuses on the research and development of preventative mental health education and programs for firefighters. Brandon is also the author of Heroes Are Also Human, and has conducted global research on firefighter mental health, focusing on building resilience and well-being within the fire community.
