New Hampshire has become the first state in the nation to extend its employee assistance program to volunteer firefighters, EMTs and other first responders, expanding access to mental health support for emergency personnel in small and rural communities.
Gov. Kelly Ayotte signed HB 1705, legislation that will allow volunteer departments to access the state Employee Assistance Program beginning July 1, 2027, subject to funding in the next state budget.
The measure is designed to close a support gap for volunteer first responders who often serve in communities without the mental health resources available to larger, full-time departments.
“Being a first responder means you are with people when they have their worst moments,” Ayotte said. “They have to face what they have seen, which can cause a lot of trauma.”
Under the law, the program will be available to volunteer first responders and full-time responders serving towns with five or fewer full-time paid first responders.
State Rep. Loren Selig, D-Durham, who has championed the issue for nearly three years, said the program is expected to cost about $115,000 annually.
“We heard from first responders about the impacts of that ongoing trauma and how hard it is to keep showing up,” Selig said. “It became clear we needed to take action to do something, especially in the most rural areas of the state that have so little support available to them.”
“It may not be enough care, but it is something,” she added.
Veteran volunteer EMT Gardiner Cass of Cornish said he experienced a mental health crisis after responding to the suicide of his best friend and colleague, only to learn that services were not available to first responders from small towns.
“He was four miles down the road from where I live. We lived on the same road, and I was one of the first ones on the scene,” Cass said. “It was rough dealing with that.”
Rep. Margaret Drye, R-Plainfield, who co-wrote the bill and has served as an EMT for 46 years, said first responders are exposed to repeated trauma and often rely on informal peer support.
“Remember that first responders see more trauma in a year than most people see in their lifetimes, and we take care of our own,” Drye said.
“We keep track of each other when there is a set of bad calls, but sometimes that’s not enough. That’s where the Employee Assistance Program can make all the difference.”
Small-town first responders are more likely to know the people they are treating, a factor officials said can make traumatic incidents more difficult to process.
State Fire Marshal Sean Toomey, a longtime volunteer with the Weare Fire Department and its former chief fire officer, said recent calls in his community underscored the emotional strain on rural responders.
“Just in the last couple of weeks, we’ve been to two medical calls that resulted in cardiac arrest, CPR for us to do, and these were people that were younger than me,” Toomey said.
“We knew the people,” he added. “The thing with larger departments was often the responders didn’t know those people as well as we did in a small town like this one.”
Ayotte praised the bipartisan coalition behind the bill. In February, 34 House Republicans joined Democrats to advance the measure in a 194-154 vote, and the Senate later passed it by voice vote.
Selig said she first became aware of the service gap through the New Hampshire Theatre Project’s “The Elephant in the Room,” a program focused on post-traumatic stress disorder and post-traumatic stress among first responders and others.
Cass, who became a full-time firefighter with the Windsor, Vermont, Fire Department in October 2024 while continuing to volunteer in Cornish, said he remains in counseling and urged others in the fire service to seek help when they need it.
