Smoky Mountain News | June 3, 2020

Page 6

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Haywood paramedic loses life amid pandemic Justin Mitchell pictured with his grandmother, Loretta Farrow. Donated photo

ditionally,” Wandalee said. “When the time comes to go before the Lord and stand there for your judgement, I think that will be between God and Justin. The judgement from other people bothered him a little bit, but he got over it and began to be who he was.” Matthew said that in the years they were together, Justin didn’t encounter issues associated with the prejudice and discrimination that often surrounds being gay. Justin had mentioned church members “telling him disparaging remarks and things like that,” Matthew said, “but he was true to himself and he knew who he was and he accepted himself, and he accepted us, and we were just growing along together.” Matthew met Justin in 2014 while working for a company that provided software used in ambulances and firetrucks. The company, based in Asheville, had maintenance contracts with Anderson and Pickens counties in South Carolina. “We met in the course of me being there and doing maintenance work and things like that at the EMS station,” said Matthew. “We struck up a conversation and from that particular point it blossomed into our relationship. That was all the way back in 2014.” ccording to Matthew, fears of the COVID-19 pandemic and the stresses associated with his career as a paramedic weighed on Justin tremendously. However, the pandemic wasn’t the first indicator of the young paramedic’s struggles. Justin had been an EMS paramedic since 2007 and held a bachelor’s degree in occupational health and safety from University of

Smoky Mountain News

June 3-9, 2020

A BY HANNAH MCLEOD STAFF WRITER ustin Mitchell grew up like many young men in the South. He had a big family and attended church. His partner described him as southernly polite and chivalrous. Yet, he was anything but ordinary. He had been an EMS paramedic since 2007, he held a bachelor’s degree in occupational health and safety and served as a privately contracted flight medic in Iraq. Everything changed for Justin on March 31 when he was told he had previously transported Haywood County’s first positive COVID-19 patient. “That really, really, really took a toll on him, and it really impacted him tremendously,” said Justin’s partner Matthew Allred. “And from that moment on it really began to break him down. He was so afraid that he was going to bring it home and give it to me, or any of our friends or family.”

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rowing up in Piedmont, South Carolina, Justin’s mother said his nickname from early on was Dennis the Menace because of his wild and trickster nature. “He would pick on and play tricks on everybody. Once he rigged up a rubber band on a water bottle somehow and when I opened it up, it squirted all over me. He just laughed. And he loved that, playing those simple jokes on people. His brothers and sisters could tell you the same thing, he was a nut,” said Wandalee Adair, Justin’s mother. “He liked to push peoples’ buttons wherever we went.” One of the first stories she shared to 6

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describe this part of Justin’s personality involved him pulling a fire alarm. “My mom had him at the mall when he was little, and they were in Belk, and Justin decided he was going to pull the fire alarm. Well, the police, the fire trucks, everybody came running,” she said. As Wandalee described her son, one thing was becoming more and more obvious and soon enough, she shared that her son was the middle child of five. “He said he had middle child syndrome. One time we left him at a ball field when my other son was playing ball. We got halfway up the road and I thought, it’s too quiet in here, where’s Justin? Back around we go and he’s there playing on the playground. So, he never would let us live that down. He’d always tell everybody, ‘I’m the middle child and I have the syndrome.’” At 12 years old, Justin took up the guitar, something that came natural to him. “His daddy’s side is a musically inclined family. They don’t read notes, they hear something played one time and then they can do it. And Justin was one of those,” said Wandalee. “That song from Oh Brother Where Art Thou, Man of Constant Sorrow, oh he tore that one up.” Justin played guitar, drums, bass and sang in the band at the church where he grew up and also worked in the sound booth. “Justin encountered some prejudice from some people at our church for him being gay. But just some people. But God says love unconditionally, period. I wasn’t gonna turn my back on my son ‘cause I loved him uncon-

“I believe Justin touched so many lives in ways that people really needed. One way or another, with a smile or a talk, or whatever. Justin would listen. He just loved life.” — Wandalee Adair, mother

Columbia South Carolina. He was a nationally registered paramedic and previously served as a privately contracted medic in Iraq during a six-month deployment. Matthew said that Justin had been diagnosed with PTSD when he returned home from his time in Iraq in 2013. The images Justin saw, along with the decisions that had to be made at the in-field hospital, resulted in PTSD that caused anxiety, sleeplessness, nightmares and flashbacks. Justin’s mother described him as having a quiet strength. He would rarely complain about anything he might be going through, one reason she and her family never worried about him. “Never had to worry about him, at all. Whatever he did, we didn’t have to worry,” she said. “One of the things I learned from Justin was strength. He went through some pain with his feet, and I’ve never seen a child have

to walk on the side and the inside of their feet. And when he was little, he would complain about it hurting, which I know it did. But he wouldn’t complain but just one time, and then he’d keep goin.” (Justin suffered from flatfeet, or fallen arches, a condition that can cause serious pain and swelling in the feet.) ccording to a survey conducted by the Journal of Emergency Medical Services in 2015, 86 percent of EMS workers report critical stress due to their work. For the purposes of the study, critical stress was defined as “the stress we undergo either as a result of a single critical incident that had a significant impact upon you, or the accumulation of stress over a period of time. This stress has a strong emotional impact on providers, regardless of their years of service.” The survey also revealed that 37 percent of EMS workers had contemplated suicide and 6.6 percent had previously attempted suicide. Those statistics are around 10 times higher than national averages, according to information gathered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Another study conducted in 2019 by EMS World found that EMS providers report high degrees of workplace stress. The most common factors contributing to this stress are traumatic calls, poor sleep quality, long shifts, lack of downtime after difficult calls, low salary and low job satisfaction. The study concluded that at least 31.3 percent of respondents reflected increased risk for future suicidal behavior and 27.2 percent reported suicidal ideation in the past year — a rate seven times higher than the general population according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. The EMS World study found that males, as is true in the general population, were more likely to be at risk for suicidal behavior. The three most common suggested problems were the need for downtime after difficult calls; lack of support from peers, supervisors and the organization for which they worked; and lack of resources available for individuals struggling with suicidal thoughts, including employee assistance programs (EAPs), and more specifically, that EAPs did not typically include experts who were familiar with or had any prior EMS experience. Fiona Thomas is a licensed paramedic and President of the Code Green Campaign, a suicide prevention and mental wellness advocacy organization created by first responders, dedicated to first responders. According to Thomas, the organization has seen an increase in the need for mental health services in places hit hard by the pandemic. She said she expects that need to transition across the country as the virus spreads and additional waves hit. One of the greatest obstacles to implementing change in EMS mental health culture relates to the stigma associated with suicidal ideation and mental healthcare. According to EMS World, “the EMS culture is one in which providers experiencing suicidal ideation can’t always discuss their concerns with colleagues or superiors or seek other forms of help. They may fear being perceived as weaker than their peers or retal-

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