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Dr. Lisa Franklin urges routine, low-barrier mental-health checks for first responders
Summary
At a Cook County Violence Against Women Task Force meeting, clinical psychologist Dr. Lisa Franklin and partners pushed for brief, routine wellness check-ins and roll-call psychoeducation for police and fire personnel to reduce moral injury, improve de-escalation and lower litigation costs; participants discussed insurance, grant funding and implementation barriers.
Dr. Lisa Franklin, a licensed clinical psychologist, told members of the Cook County Violence Against Women Task Force that routine, low-barrier mental-health check-ins should be part of first responders’ everyday practice to reduce moral injury and improve outcomes on domestic-violence calls.
"We need to make wellness a part of everything," Dr. Franklin said, arguing that short, repeatable interventions — for example, a five-minute clinician segment during roll call — would reach officers more effectively than occasional multi-hour trainings.
Franklin, who previously worked in the City of Chicago’s law department and now consults as a clinician, described how repeated exposure to traumatic scenes breeds moral injury and chronic irritability among officers. She recounted an officer who, already emotionally taxed and expecting to leave early for his child’s game, was…
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