What the research says, and what it does not.

The need

• In a national survey, 44.5% of Canadian public safety personnel screened positive for symptoms consistent with at least one mental disorder (Carleton et al., 2018). This is a screening result, not a diagnosis rate.
• In a large U.S. study, 46.8% of firefighters reported suicidal thoughts at some point in their career (Stanley et al., 2015).
• Firefighters made 9.4% of Ontario’s approved mental stress injury claims between 2017 and 2021 (Edgelow et al., 2023).

Why peer support needs clinical backing

The U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS Office), which publishes national practice standards for peer support in first responder agencies, is direct about this:

The same report addresses how that support can be structured:

That is the model OSRC is built on.

Where our model fits

Canadian research has proposed a typology of peer support for public safety personnel that separates peer enabled, peer led, and peer partnership programs, and separates one-time programs from ongoing services (Price et al., 2022). OSRC is a peer partnership delivered as an ongoing service.

Ontario’s expert panel on police officer deaths by suicide recommended that services build mental health capacity on their own or in partnership with neighbouring services (Office of the Chief Coroner for Ontario, 2019).

Critical incident debriefing

Critical Incident Stress Debriefing is a structured, seven-phase group process designed for the days following a significant critical incident (Mitchell & Everly, 1996). In our programs, it is always facilitated by a clinician from outside the service.

The Post Critical Incident Seminar

Published studies of the seminar are small but consistent. Our PCIS page separates the published research from unpublished program data.

The limits, honestly

Peer support is widely used with first responders, but the research base is still developing, and reviewers have called for stronger study designs and better evaluation (Bowers et al., 2025). That is why every OSRC program measures itself with confidential baseline and follow-up surveys, and reports anonymous results back to the service.