I’m writing this in regards to the article (“Firefighters need help, too,” Sun City Independent, March 29, 2023) about counseling for first responders.

I’ve sat around trying to best describe my support for any program, funding or resources to make counseling available top the women and men that diligently day in and day out do a job that begins with compassion, caring and dedication to their fellow human beings. The trauma they face is real.

It is real because of their compassion and dedication. To witness sorrow, death, every sort of illness and sometimes man’s inhumanity to man, gun shots, knifings and beatings on a daily basis will not keep them from working tirelessly to not only save lives but to comfort and calm and treat fear as they’re doing it.

The peer support teams are invaluable as are the options of professional counselors. I encourage you to do anything you can, be it through legislative funding, showing public support for the funds that are needed to assure our firefighters, medical personnel and all our first responders are getting the help and financial support needed to help them as they help us. For those of us and the people we love.

Our verbal gratitude is helping, but like everything else, funding is needed.

We’d like to invite our readers to submit their civil comments, pro or con, on this issue. Email AZOpinions@iniusa.org.