ATLANTA, Ga. – For Sgt. Ashley Wilson, the day she held the hand of her partner and best friend as he died in the street was just the beginning of a nightmarish journey.
It was 20 October 2018, the first cold day of autumn. Wilson remembers putting on her long-sleeved uniform for the first time that year and going to work. A few hours later, she and her beat partner, Officer Antwan Toney, who was attending the police academy at the same time, received a radio call about a suspicious car.
When Toney pulled up to investigate, the driver fired several shots through his own windscreen before Toney could say a word, hitting him six times.
Wilson arrived moments later and began CPR with other officers and first responders, but to no avail. Toney later died in hospital, leaving Wilson with severe post-traumatic stress.
“The depression really started to set in, the anxiety really started to set in where I thought every person in every car stop we made had a gun,” Wilson said. “It got to the point where it was difficult to brush my teeth. It was all I could do to will myself up.”
Nightmares and sleepless nights became common, and relentless flashbacks took her back to that terrible moment. She couldn’t see a puddle of water without seeing Toney’s blood on the pavement. She couldn’t wear the long-sleeved uniform she wore that day.
“At that point, I would do anything to close my eyes and not see him die over and over again in front of me,” Wilson said.
Then came another nightmare: the burden of paying for her own mental health treatment.
Georgia’s workers’ compensation laws don’t cover post-traumatic stress for first responders unless they’re also physically injured on the job. Wilson’s injuries were psychological, but injuries nonetheless.
“If I had been shot and gotten PTSD, I would have been covered,” she said. “But because I saw my best friend get shot and develop PTSD, I was on my own.”
While she was fortunate to find a good therapist and begin treatment, Wilson racked up about $20,000 in medical bills out of pocket. Therapy sessions can cost hundreds of dollars an hour, and there was no way for her to tap into her department’s or the state’s resources to help.
But she’s drawing new optimism from a bill that will be back on the table when the General Assembly begins its session this winter. House Bill 451 didn’t pass last year, but this year it seeks to create a supplemental insurance program for first responders – police and corrections officers, firefighters, EMTs – to use for mental health treatment.
The programme would be unlike any other in the nation, and the bill’s sponsors estimate it would cost less than $200 a year per first responder who needs it.
It’s a price worth paying, Wilson said, even though the bill would not cover her treatment, as her diagnosis came before it was passed.
“It’s about leaving this profession better than I found it,” she said. “It’s about making sure that first responders who need help don’t have to choose between having a place to live and choosing to live. Because when it comes down to it, time and money prevent first responders from getting care.”
There’s also never been a time when the legislation has been more needed. New research from the Ruderman Family Foundation shows that first responders are dying by suicide at a faster rate than they’re dying on the job.
“Post-traumatic stress disorder is not invisible to the first responders who have it or their families,” Wilson said. “If my struggle can help one person, can help one police officer, one firefighter, one paramedic, so that they don’t have to go through that struggle, they don’t have to feel alone and in despair like I did, then it was worth it.”
