Andy O’Hara developed Post Traumatic Stress Disorder due to his experiences as a police officer. He hopes the Badge of Life Program helps other officers to better cope with the stress of their jobs. —Photo by Michael A. Piekarz

Badge of Life: Protecting Those That Protect You

January 27, 2009

By Michael A. Piekarz
Staff Writer

Badge of Life, a program to help peace officers cope with the traumatic price they often pay for their service to the public, can trace its beginning to the day Andy O’Hara finally cracked in 1992.

On that day, O’Hara, now 61, found himself sitting on his bedroom carpet trying to decide whether he should shoot himself in the side of the head or in the mouth. The only thing that kept him from pulling the trigger was the sound of his wife’s car in the driveway.

Up to that point, there were few indications that something was amiss. From the moment he joined the California Highway Patrol in 1969, O’Hara had been the type of officer emulated by others.

When he was promoted to sergeant, he was the top candidate in the state of California. It was a reflection of his desire to protect and serve society and his drive to bring order to the masses.

“Police are trained to be in control, and it’s expected of them,” O’Hara recalled. “When I collapsed, it was the realization that I no longer had control.”

What O’Hara and those around him never realized was the high price he had paid during his career in law enforcement. He had developed Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

PTSD is defined by the National Institute of Mental Health as “an anxiety disorder that can develop after exposure to a terrifying event, or an ordeal in which grave physical harm occurred or was threatened.”

Events causing PTSD include violent personal assaults, natural or human-caused disasters, accidents or military combat.

What makes PTSD particularly insidious is that it often comes from a series of events regarding a career. It may also be the only medically-recognized mental illness caused solely by external events.

“Death, carnage and hostility are the day-to-day life of a police officer,” said O’Hara. “Officers forget the horrors that they see, but they never really ‘forget’ things, and sooner or later, they catch up to them.”

In O’Hara’s case, two events were particularly traumatic. In 1975, he had nearly died during a hand-to-hand struggle with a criminal. In 1991, one of the officers under his command was killed in a motorcycle accident while leaving work, and O’Hara had responded to the crash.

In between were thousands of other events which he thought he had forgotten, but which remained trapped inside of him. O’Hara began to experience flashbacks and nightmarish recurrences of past events. Suicide seemed better than his living nightmare.

O’Hara took a disability retirement from CHP in 1993, and he found employment in more mundane activities. He has undergone extensive therapy for his condition, but he still suffers from its effects.


“You never really heal from PTSD,” said O’Hara, “but you do learn to manage it.”

Certain things still bother him. “I can’t watch a movie that has screaming in it,” he said, citing an example. “I have to leave.”

Four years ago, O’Hara’s PTSD worsened. “I had a relapse,” he said with a shrug.

Part of the way O’Hara coped with his relapse was by purchasing a Web page and writing an electronic diary, also known as a ‘blog.’

“I felt compelled to create a Web page where I could write down my experiences,” he explained.

Soon after he posted his thoughts on the Internet, O’Hara received a telephone call from another former officer, who also suffered from PTSD. Soon after, the Badge of Life program was born.

The purpose of Badge of Life is not a surefire strategy, although the numbers of suicides should drop significantly as a result of the program.
“We are trying to get peace officers into therapy — to help them deal with their situation,” said O’Hara.

Badge of Life attempts to help officers cope with job-related trauma – mental injuries caused by the events and circumstances forced on them by their job.

Identifying the injury is sometimes difficult.

“Officers want their trauma to be heroic, but the worst traumas are not,” said O’Hara. “They are mistakes and errors the officer believes he has made. Those are not heroic.”

“Officers need a place to go before they become suicidal. There are healthy ways of coping with stress, and there are healthy ways of coping with trauma,” he continued.

One of the ways to help officers cope with trauma is to have them regularly meet with a counselor to help them maintain their mental fitness.

Another approach advocated by the program is to teach officers resiliency — the skills necessary to develop the ability to recover from trauma — rather than burying the injury until it surfaces with catastrophic results.

“Resiliency is a learning process that can start at the police academy,” O’Hara adamantly exclaimed. “I believe that officers can not only have a healthy career, but they can have a happy career.”

Many specialists who deal with law enforcement agree with O’Hara.

“I see this program as a possible useful tool in the prevention of fully-developed PTSD and possible maladaptive coping among police officers,” stated John M. Violanti, Ph.D., author of “Police Suicide: Epidemic in Blue.”

“In a sense, it is ‘inoculation’ against future psychological problems. Given the stress and strain associated with police work, such an endeavor is well worth the time invested by departments.”

For Andy O’Hara, it’s about more than helping other officers avoid making the choice he almost made; it’s about helping them and coping with their own injuries.

“It’s been a healing process for me. Doing something and turning it around helps,” he said.