🔒Mental Health Matters: A police officer’s therapy success story

Local 4 and ClickOnDetroit will be doing a series of stories on mental health.

Watch the “Mental Health Matters” coverage in the coming week.

Here is a success story from a ClickOnDetroit reader (share yours below):

My therapy success story comes from a unit within the Detroit Police Department -- Peer Support. When my brother was shot and killed on May 28, 2019, my world was turned upside down. As a Detroit police officer myself, I didn’t know how to truly respond to his violent way of dying by being shot and killed. In my career, I have seen dead bodies of young Black males in the streets of Detroit. Now, I was faced with wondering how did my brother look, lay, and what was his last thoughts before he died. This caused me to feel down, sad and at times depressed because I couldn’t save my brother from dying. As a Detroit police officer, you protect and serve and I felt like I couldn’t do that for own brother. However, the Detroit Police Department has a unit called Peer Support which provides support and various levels of care to officers and their families during difficult times. My Peer Support officer that was assigned to me would check on me regularly. She provided advice on how to keep moving in life and she encouraged me to continue to remain positive and find the beauty within my role as a Detroit police officer working with youth at Detroit PAL. Due to her encouraging methods of contact and therapy for me, I was able to create a presentation through Detroit PAL that focused on teaching minority male middle school basketball players/students how to make GREAT choices in life through goal setting, being resilient, being healthy, being accountable, and embracing teamwork. I know I couldn’t teach my deceased brother about making great choices anymore, but I found joy in teaching the Detroit PAL basketball kids about great choices in his death. Another officer gave me therapy through eating healthy and exercising through running. Over the past year, I’ve been running and I lost weight, and mentally and physically I am much stronger. This past weekend, DPD and DMC partnered together in a 5k race to raise funds for the mental and physical health of Detroit police officers. I finished the race 5th overall and 3rd overall within my age group (30-39). My therapy came from Detroit police officers who at times witness the most unbelievable acts that humans can go through. I think this positive story is something that the community should see/hear because just because we are police officers, that doesn’t mean we don’t go through bad mental moments ourselves.

Officer Bryant George

Do you have any therapy success stories you would like to share? You may remain anonymous.

Please share here:

• Find here: Free mental health resources in Michigan
• Free and confidential resources to help you or a loved one connect with a skilled, trained mental health professional