During the height of the city’s coronavirus pandemic in April, New York City First Lady Chirlane McCray went on CNN to decry the high rate of suicide attempts by Emergency Medical Service workers — nearly six times that of the general population.
She pledged to help the first responders by teaching them combat stress management tactics through a new city-run program called HERO-NY — nearly five months later, not a single one of the city’s 3,700 FDNY EMS workers have received the training.
During that time at least three EMTs have committed suicide.
“These past six months have been really a life-changing event for my men and women,” Oren Barzilay, head of the union that represents FDNY EMTs and paramedics, told The Post.
“Their work environment changed from ordinary rescues to a war-zone environment where they were just seeing people in their death beds or on their way to deaths. They need trauma specialists that deal with Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. They need battlefield psychiatrists to deal with what they’ve seen and nothing has been provided to us. Nothing after numerous requests,” Barzilay said.