When deadly floods swept through the Texas Hill Country on the morning of July 4, the first people on the scene were law enforcement, firefighters and emergency medical services personnel.
They were among the first to bear witness to the historic tragedy while working long, emotional days on rescue and recovery.
For most Texans, these are once-in-a-lifetime events. But for first responders, it’s just part of the job – and something that can lead to mental health struggles. Studies show that suicide rates in the profession are among the highest in the country.
Now, a new Texas law taking effect on Sept. 1 aims to help these workers by creating a peer support network. It’s being designed to easily connect the state’s firefighting and emergency medical services personnel with quick support when they need it.
The measure, House Bill 35, was successfully pushed to the governor’s desk by Rep. Senfronia Thompson, a Houston Democrat, during Texas’ 89th Legislative Session.
“I had raised issues on several occasions that we were not doing anything to elevate the support of our first responders’ mental health,” said Thompson.
Even before the July floods in Central Texas, Thompson had been concerned about the issue.
“They respond in so many different ways,” she told The Texas Newsroom. “Automobile accidents, somebody getting killed, mass shootings, all kinds of floods.”
The legislation is one of hundreds of new laws passed by the Texas Legislature that take effect in September.
Building off of previously successful support programs
While HB 35 will launch a new peer support network for Texas firefighters and EMS personnel, the idea behind it isn’t new. The system is modeled on an existing law enforcement programcredited with dramatically reducing police suicides in Texas.
Mental-health advocates argue that expanding peer-to-peer support could provide a vital lifeline to first responders grappling with trauma and overwhelming stress.
“Texas has an opportunity to lead the nation in first responder well-being,” said Sean Hanna, the vice president of Veterans and Public Safety for the Texas-based Meadows Mental Health Policy Institute, while testifying on the measure’s behalf before lawmakers in April.
Hanna has worked with similar programs, including helping to build, implement and operate Texas’ military peer network system.
“We use the local mental health authorities across the state as those peer service coordinator hubs, recruiting and training military veterans,” said Hanna. “And that was shown to be so successful.”
That success, he said, led to the state coming to him when they wanted to establish a law enforcement peer network system. Suicide deaths among police in Texas dropped in 2024, the network’s first full year of operation, he said.
He said now was the moment for Texas lawmakers to help first responders, too.
“Fire, EMS are routinely exposed to trauma on the job. This leads to complex mental health conditions and unfortunately to a silent epidemic of first responders’ suicides,” Hanna said.
B.J. Wagner works alongside Hanna as the institute’s executive vice president for Health and Public Safety and also testified in HB 35’s favor earlier this year.
“Most folks in the world will have one, maybe two experiences in our lifetime that really rise to that level of being a traumatic event,” Wagner said.
For police officers, she said that number is in the high 100s over their decades-long careers. First responders deal with similar situations. A study found that among U.S. firefighters, 46.8% reported suicidal ideation.
A 2018 report on first responder mental health by the Ruderman Family Foundation found that firefighters die by suicide at even higher rates than their law enforcement counterparts.
Specifically, firefighters die by suicide at a rate of 18 per 100,000 — slightly higher than the 17 per 100,000 rate for law enforcement officers — and EMS workers are roughly 1.39 times more likely to die by suicide than the general public.
How will the first responder peer network work?
As outlined in HB 35, the Texas Division of Emergency Management will have the program up and running by March 2026.
The idea for how the program will work is copied from Hanna and Wagner’s playbook for making the law enforcement peer network, which works almost like catching an Uber ride. Officers download the Lone Star Readiness app onto their phone, request a peer, and then wait for a fellow officer to respond to their request.
Wagner says the response should be instantaneous. However, if it takes more than an hour to receive a response, participants will be directed to a national version of the peer network program.
Wagner says one of the most important elements of the system is anonymity.
“The most constant thing that we heard was the success stories came when the officer could access care without divulging their identity,” Wagner said. “They wanted to feel secure in that care environment before they really trusted that peer.”
As the program gets up and running, Hanna told lawmakers that, “Texas has an opportunity to lead the nation in first responder well-being.”
Until its official target launch date next spring, Texas is also filling in the gap, especially for the first responders involved in July’s floods.
Thompson told The Texas Newsroom that the state is now allowing first responders access to the law enforcement peer support network so they could get help sooner.
If you found the reporting above valuable, please consider making a donation to support it here. Your gift helps pay for everything you find on texasstandard.org and KUT.org. Thanks for donating today.