CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Police officers statistically face the most trauma than anyone else in one lifetime, and now, they too are being given an outlet to help cope with it.

Officers with the Charleston Police Department are currently getting the opportunity to take a 32-hour peer-to-peer training course through the Police Benevolent Foundation, a national organization that provides funding support and education to police officers and departments across the country.

The peer training encompasses the mental health aspect behind the job of a law enforcement officer as it relates to on-the-job stress, recognizing mental health disorders, family issues, and the overall well-being of each officer.

Corporal Adam Lindell with the Charleston Police Department said the traumatic situations he faces from day to day on the job are not tidbits he would share with his family around the dinner table, and so, his fellow officers are naturally the only other people he can turn to and talk about it with as they can also often relate.

“They have the understanding that I do, and they have been through the situation that I am currently having issues with, and they can give me some avenues to help me get through it in a healthy way,” Lindell said.

According to the Law Enforcement Alliance for Peer Support (LEAPS), the average life expectancy of a police officer is 59, living 20 years less than the average citizen.

Instructing the course is Tim Rutledge with LEAPS. He said within their shorter lifetime, police officers will face approximately 188 traumatic events– the average citizen only sees about two to three.

Rutledge said in addition, law enforcement is the number one occupation for suicide.

He said for a longtime, police officers have gone without any support system of this kind, and from the statistics, it really started to show.

“All of these things, because, we haven’t had a mechanism to deal with this stuff, we haven’t been taking care of each other, and we have had no where to go with our trauma, so day after day after day, this trauma builds up, so what peer support does, it gives officers a safe outlet to get that trauma out,” Rutledge said.

Lindell said as one of the most stressful occupations you could ever have, it’s relieving to see that it’s starting to get recognized how much officers need this kind of training.

“In today’s world, well, always, law enforcement is very stressful and we just want to make sure, especially here at Charleston PD, that when you go through an incident that’s very stressful, you deal with it in a healthy way and not go down the rabbit holes of unhealthy ways,” he said.

He said this is the first time he’s ever heard of a peer support mental health system for officers.

As mental health awareness has started to expand for the general public, Lindell said he believes that it has helped eradicate the stigma for law enforcement officers as well, and the longtime notion that they have a perfect bill of mental health.

“Today, everyone is talking about mental health in the public, but I don’t think the public realizes that we’re humans too,” Lindell said. “We deal with a lot of stuff, you know, one minute we’re eating lunch with our loved ones, the next minute we’re at a fatality car crash, I mean, if you really think about that, that’s terrible, you’re literally eating lunch with your wife, the next minute you see a dead body and you have to go make a death notification.”

Rutledge said they have so far seen incredible results with this program.

As a retired police officer and a narcotics agent for 29 years in Mississippi, where the peer support program started, he said they just began to see a need for it more and more.

Now, Rutledge said they are taking it across the country in hopes to improve the lives of all police officers facing traumas on the job.

In West Virginia, Rutledge said Charleston has been one of the first areas of implementing the program, and it’s a very progressive move for the city to support their officers in the matters of mental health.

“Your leadership, from the mayor to the chief to everyone in between and all the way down, they get it, they want their officers to live longer now, to help their family lives, to help their living and their lifestyles, they get it,” Rutledge said.

He said they are already growing the program in West Virginia as they plan to soon take it up north to Morgantown and into some areas of the Eastern Panhandle.

Eventually, Rutledge said they want to implement a statewide peer support team where officers from one part of the state can travel to help another officer in need who may have just been the target of an officer-involved shooting or something to that effect.

Lindell said that by dealing with their traumas head on like this, it in turn, makes them better officers.

“You have a better understanding of people you deal with on the street, of dealing with your family,” Lindell added.

On Thursday, Charleston officers were finishing up day four of the program.