Dr. Laura Brodie, Ph.D.

I have worked with first responders and military for years - twenty-nine years to be specific. Something that I have seen over and over in the people I have worked with is many come from dysfunctional families of origin. Think about it for a moment. What made you want to do a job that is full of risk, trauma and chaos? Many times it is due to childhood issues of living in a chaotic, abusive or abandoning home. You learned how to negotiate that mine zone and so you are very good at what you...

Something that is not recognized by many in the civilian world is that our First Responders as a whole are more psychologically healthy than the general population at the time of hiring. How can I say this? Well, very few careers require the psychological screening and assessment that First Responders have to pass in order to obtain their job. In doing such a screening, the hope is to protect the public from someone who is unsafe, but the hidden benefit is to hopefully protect the individual...

Working sex crimes is a necessity to protect the innocent and vulnerable. The sexual crimes of human trafficking, child pornography, prostitution and child molestation are crimes that devastate victim’s lives and destroy trust. Individuals working these crimes do so in order to attempt to stop the devastation. However, there has been little attention given to the psychological damage that can be created by performing these investigations. The human brain was not designed to undergo the trauma...