Someone dies from suicide every 16 hours in New York City, a reality that first responders know all too well.

 

This latest statistic from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reveals a growing mental health crisis that emergency responders see the worst of on a regular basis.

 

The issue is top of mind for New York Fire Department Emergency Medical Services Station 7 in Chelsea. Paramedics Daniel Riccobono and Justin Imburgia, emergency medical technician Peter Cirelli and Lieutenant Michael Curatoco have responded to disturbing scenes for the last 20 years. But the uptick in suicides on the heels of the pandemic is highlighting the toll these traumatic deaths can have on first responders themselves.

 

With 50 million Americans experiencing mental illness and over 12 million seriously considering suicide each year, emergency responders are exposed to a high number of traumatic events, according to a 2023 study in Science Direct Journal.

Suicides are called into Station 7 as “major trauma incidences,” and Riccobono understands why. Last month, a man on methamphetamines swan-dived to his death from an East Village building. “It was pretty traumatic––where he was in half. They unfolded him. He still had a pulse,” said Riccobono.

 

Deaths of this nature are referred to as “jumper downs,” the most common form of suicide the men of Station 7 see.

 

“They don’t always die. I mean, the body is very resilient,” added Riccobono. “You can have this person jump off 20, 30 stories. And it’s incredible to find the bodies still sometimes in one piece. It also depends on how you fall. And then not to get too gruesome, sometimes people hit stuff on the way down.”

 

In addition to rendering aid or declaring a person dead, first responders must preserve the scene for the police department, so foul play can be ruled out, particularly for grisly incidents. Imburgia said one scene involved an “exit bag,” in which the victim had died from tying a bag filled with helium around his head.

 

“You don’t really get to process the fact, like this is a person who took their life until well after the fact,” said Cirelli.  “Maybe sometimes until you go home and you’re in the shower, you’re like, ‘fuck,’ like what made him do that? Was there something that somebody could have done?”

 

In a job that requires seeing injured and dead people, including children, there is a fair amount of burn-out among emergency medical technicians and paramedics. “You have to learn to be passive on this job or it will eat you alive,” said Riccobono.

 

First responders’ ability to avoid emotional responses to trauma is a result of chronic exposure, said Carol Tosone, a physician and trauma expert at NYU. When someone frequently compartmentalizes certain feelings and reactions to traumatic situations, it’s called an “isolation of affect––a numbness” by which “the abnormal becomes normal,” said Tosone.

 

And the emergency workers of EMS Station 7 understand this firsthand.

 

Cirelli said he remembered turning over the body of a mother who had jumped to her death and finding her child beneath her. Curatoco described a van hitting a group of children crossing the road, one who belonged to a member of his station at the time. Riccobono said he performed CPR with his fingers on a four-month-old infant before the baby died from smoke inhalation.

 

Yet, the men are not experiencing PTSD as they recall these events, said Tosone. “They’re kind of heroes. That they’re able to do something that most people could not do, would not do, or can’t even think about.”

Although the mental health crisis surges, members of EMS Station 7 said they must press on.

 

“You have to sacrifice a piece of yourself to keep doing it. And that’s just part of the job. If you got emotional every time, you wouldn’t last,” said Curatoco.