RMPBS News
Crisis After Crisis: Dispatchers Carry the Mental Weight of Every Call
3/18/2025 | 3mVideo has Closed Captions
Durango 911 dispatchers face stress and mental health challenges while serving as first responders.
In Durango, Colorado, 911 dispatchers deal with the stress of high-pressure calls, multitasking, and the emotional toll of life-or-death situations. With PTSD rates higher than police officers, the Durango Emergency Communications Center prioritizes mental health support and training. Though recognized as first responders in Colorado, they’re still not federally acknowledged.
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RMPBS News is a local public television program presented by RMPBS
RMPBS News
Crisis After Crisis: Dispatchers Carry the Mental Weight of Every Call
3/18/2025 | 3mVideo has Closed Captions
In Durango, Colorado, 911 dispatchers deal with the stress of high-pressure calls, multitasking, and the emotional toll of life-or-death situations. With PTSD rates higher than police officers, the Durango Emergency Communications Center prioritizes mental health support and training. Though recognized as first responders in Colorado, they’re still not federally acknowledged.
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Okay, and he said he would harm anyone?
Being a 911 dispatcher is a stressful job Understood, are you willing to testify what you saw?
You're not just doing one job.
You're multitasking.
We're listening to everything our caller is telling us, but we're also taking information from law enforcement and from fire and EMS.
We can be talking from anywhere from 3 to 5 people at one time, all asking us to do something.
Objectively speaking, dispatching is a stressful job.
You know, we multitask and juggle a lot of high priority incidents.
People are never calling us on the best day of their lives.
You know, it could be the worst day of their life.
I would say the most stressful call was probably the Santa Rita Park shooting because I was fresh out of training.
The 911 lines just lit up.
and so there's two of us, and there's just chaos, and people are running everywhere and and trying to find, you know, who did what and descriptions and just trying to get information in such a chaotic situation.
especially because we can't see anything.
A lot of studies show that dispatch professionals experience higher incidences of PTSD than field units.
One of the key markers of if somebody develops PTSD from a traumatic stress incident is, whether or not they felt helpless in that moment.
My crew is incredibly well trained and they're very skilled.
But in that moment when you only have your voice to impact a situation where somebody life is potentially at risk.
That's the very definition of helplessness.
A lot of times we don't know if that person we spoke with lived or died.
My crew is on the receiving end of that all day, every day, 12 hour shifts.
Dispatch stress is cumulative.
So it's like you're okay, you're okay, you're okay.
And it's rising, rising, rising, rising.
And then you crash, you crash out.
And it can be one call that tips you over or something in your personal life.
I would say the culture here is absolutely amazing.
Like everybody cares about everybody.
One of the dispatchers is actually my like mentor, my peer buddy.
And so she's who I go to if I, you know, want to talk about anything.
And it just so happened that we became like super close friends too.
So it was really nice because it's just like talking to a friend or your sister.
It's definitely a stressful job.
We may not get thanked and we may not get, you know, recognition for what we do, but knowing that what I did may have caused a difference or may have saved someone's life is enough.
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RMPBS News is a local public television program presented by RMPBS