It’s not always easy to ask for help — especially when it comes to mental health. Finding the right counselor, getting an appointment, paying for care and added stigma can all be overwhelming.
And for people with jobs like firefighters, EMTs, or police officers, that stigma can be even more debilitating.
"There's a lot of concern, I think, among folks in law enforcement that if they say, 'Hey, I'm struggling, I'm dealing with some issues,’ that that could really negatively impact their career," said Katie Boone, a counselor at Presbyterian Psychological Services, a nonprofit mental health counseling center in Charlotte. "They're supposed to be, kind of, the superheroes and invincible. And it doesn't feel OK for them to ask for help."
Presbyterian Psychological Services provides free and reduced-cost services to first responders, health care workers and teachers.
One Charlotte-Mecklenburg police officer who benefited from these services is the keynote speaker at the Embrace Mental Health breakfasthosted by Presby Psych on Thursday.
'I carried that weight around for a long time'
If you’re not used to the hum of the airport, every buzz or whirl can be a bit distracting. But for CMPD Sgt. Donnie Penix, Charlotte Douglas International Airport is just his office.
Penix supervises the narcotics interdiction team, as well as the eight explosive detection dogs that help secure the airport.
"They get called for unattended bags, suspicious vehicles. If there’s a bomb threat on the aircraft or in the terminal, they respond to it," Penix said. "So it's a pretty cool job."
Penix has been with CMPD for 26 years. His dad was a police officer as well.
"(My father) was one of the founding members of the bomb squad for the police department," Penix said. "He was a crime scene investigator back then, when sworn police officers were crime scene techs. He taught fingerprint recognition at Central Piedmont."
Penix, like his father, was drawn to high-pressure roles.
"I spent 15 years on the SWAT team, 13 of which I was a sniper. I was on the alert team, which was a regional task force to respond to chemical and nuclear and biological terrorist attacks," he said. "I've taken that special operations career path."
He was also on CMPD’s Violent Criminal Apprehension Team, known as VCAT. It was during his time as a sergeant on VCAT that his life and career changed forever. In 2016, his team was searching for a homicide suspect when the man opened fire on his officers. One was hit and sustained a non-life-threatening injury.
Penix and his officers fired back.
"I carried that weight around for a long time, that it was my fault. It was my decision to go back that night and go and look for this gentleman. And it weighed heavily on me and the fact that I'd taken someone's life," Penix said. "I describe it as all these traumatic events I've seen over my career, all these critical incidents, it was like a bucket of water filling up. And I would tip enough out just to get by, until that shooting, where I just couldn't hold the water back anymore. It started overflowing, and I was headed for a really dark place."
After only five days of administrative leave, Penix returned to work. Looking back, that was a mistake.
His relationships with his coworkers changed after the shooting. He withdrew from family and friends. He was afraid to talk about how he was feeling about the incident —and he didn't want to be the only one to bring it up.
"We didn't go down the emotional road," he reflected.
'I know that shooting messed you up'
He tried counseling, but couldn’t find the right fit and decided it wasn’t for him. Then his supervisor sat him down. He knew his days in VCAT were coming to an end.
"My captain looked at me and she said, 'I know that shooting messed you up.' It was almost like someone flipped a light switch. It was the first time I heard it. I would tell it to myself, but when I heard someone else say it, it was like, OK, this makes sense. I'm really struggling,
"I lost it, broke down, went home that afternoon. I told my wife, I said, we need to go talk. So we went out (to) our garage and I took my gun off my badge off, I sat them down on the counter and said I'm done. I can't do this job anymore. Either I got to get help or I have to quit. And that's that moment of, when I made the decision to try to get some help," Penix said.
That came from Presbyterian Psychological Services. Penix was diagnosed with PTSD and began to work through all the trauma he had experienced throughout his career. If he didn’t seek help and leave VCAT, the consequences would have been dire.
"I probably wouldn't be here, doing this interview today, quite honestly," he reflected. "It was a very, very dark place at the time."
Penix is in a good groove at what will likely be one of his final assignments before retirement. It’s still an exciting gig — but it’s a slower pace, a little more predictability. He’s now in a maintenance mode in therapy, going when he feels he needs it.
Penix remembers trying to talk to his dad about the shooting. His father had been involved in one during his career as well.
"It was a few weeks or months after my shooting (incident). And I was kind of hinting around that, you know, it still bothered me a little bit. And he's like, 'Boy you get over it, stop thinking about it. You'll get over it.' That was a mentality that, that was what he was brought up in that profession was, you just don't talk about it."
Penix says his father saw an immense amount of death and destruction throughout his career, and believes it did bother his father — but back then there were no words to describe that silent suffering, or if there were, it wasn’t OK to say it out loud.
Penix hopes, now, more first responders can find their voices and ask for help if they need it.
