An annual ‘wellness check’ involves a one-on one session with a licensed mental health professional to assess an officer’s abilities to cope with job stressors and to discuss additional healthy ways to deal with them. These yearly wellness check-ins are not fitness for duty evaluations and are not disciplinary in nature. They are also not intended to screen for mental illness. Instead, they offer an opportunity for officers to discuss coping strategies and solutions to deal with the various stressors of being a First Responder. 

The cost is covered by the department or county agency, but the only information that is shared with the department or county agency is the officer’s name and attendance date. All conversations between the officer and the mental health professional are kept strictly confidential, except in the following circumstances (as is required by law):