Dr. Lisa Franklin urges routine, low-barrier mental-health checks for first responders

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 thrust into a high-risk domestic call and later said he should not have been there. "You go into these places and you see abused children, you see abused wives," she said. "Moral injury is when you see something that violates your morals."

The panel identified several barriers to expanding wellness services. Franklin and other speakers said most insurance-covered mental-health visits require a clinical diagnosis for reimbursement, which officers worry could affect credentials or firearms licensing. "If the agency covers it, there's no need for a diagnosis," Franklin said, describing a model where departments pay providers directly or use grant funding so visits do not appear on insurance records.

Participants discussed existing supports and funding options. Caitlin Brennan, CEO of the Hunter Club of Illinois, said her nonprofit helps agencies secure grants to provide annual mental-health check-ins and that her organization has the state’s largest dataset on first-responder preferences for mental-health services. She said many first responders asked for annual check-ins rather than therapy as the primary need.

Speakers also noted statutory and administrative limits. A representative summarized that a recent state law aimed at coverage for first responders applies mainly to self-insured county and municipal plans and does not give the Illinois Department of Insurance authority to force private insurers to change fully insured products. "The new law's requirements only apply to self-insured plans offered by counties, municipalities, [and] fire protection districts," a participant said, adding that fully insured products are not covered by that authority.

Discussion turned to implementation. Several participants cautioned against making wellness visits mandatory policy because that could create supervisory liability; instead, they recommended multi-tiered approaches such as supervisor and FTO-level training, peer support, and embedding brief psychoeducation in routine operational activities. Cook County representatives said peer-support and critical-incident stress training are already deployed in some sheriff and fire units.

Franklin argued that better, routine mental-health care could reduce long-term costs from litigation and lost personnel: "If we had checked in with the officer, I could have identified cases that would not exist," she said, estimating that better prevention and wellness could offset large downstream expenses.

Organizers said they would collect recommendations from the discussion for follow-up and that the session recording would be shared on Legistar. Alderman Tabarez called the meeting adjourned.