SALT LAKE CITY — Seeing House Bill 23 whiz through the Utah legislature — it’s received unanimous support so far in both the House and Senate — has been gratifying for Rep. Ryan Wilcox.

“It’s been good to see. Honestly, it’s been heartening,” said the Ogden Republican, the sponsor of the measure.

More germane, though, will be the help it provides police officers, firefighters and other first responders. The measure provides $5 million in start-up funds to help agencies around Utah implement mental health programs for first responders and it requires they they be maintained.

“That’s the purpose of putting it in code, so everybody understands that that’s required,” Wilcox said. Some agencies already have programs in place, like the Ogden Police Department, but smaller ones that don’t will have to create initiatives and find the resources after the start-up funding ends to keep them going.

The stakes, as Wilcox sees it, are high. Police, firefighters and others who back them up are called on to deal with the most traumatic, sad and violent incidents, and regular exposure to such things can take a mental toll, causing post-traumatic stress disorder, even. Resources to help contend with the fallout, however, are hit and miss, with some agencies offering assistance and others, typically the smaller ones, offering little or nothing.

“I was just blown away by how badly we missed this,” Wilcox said.

For the first time, HB 23 mandates creation of mental health programs and resources to help first responders process and deal with the trauma they witness. Spouses and children of those affected can also get help.

As is, some “just suck it up and keep going,” Wilcox said. But the measure also requires that first responders and others eligible tap into the newly created resources after they’ve been involved in a trying situation.

The Utah House approved HB 23 on third reading by a 74-0 vote in early February and the Senate approved a slightly reworked version of the bill on third reading last Wednesday in a 27-0 vote. The versions of the bill will have to be reconciled before a final proposal is sent to Gov. Spencer Cox’s desk, but Wilcox is optimistic.

Randy Watt, the former Ogden police chief, first filled Wilcox in on the situation in late 2020 as the lawmaker started his stint as chairperson of the House Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice Committee. “I wasn’t prepared for the conversation about mental health, about what they found when they did their study, what that looked like, about the fallout for officers’ families,” Wilcox said.

Watt, as police chief, had called for a study to get a gauge of the mental health of his officers, and in testimony last October to lawmakers, he said the effort found 78 “red flag” mental health cases among Ogden police and firefighters. That was the data he had imparted to Wilcox a year earlier.

“Suicides, broken marriages, failed families,” Watt told lawmakers last October. City officials, he went on, “hadn’t done very much of a job at all to deal with those things.”

Wilcox’s efforts to push legislation forward commenced after that conversation with Watt in late 2020. He spoke with reps from other agencies and heard similar stories. The City of Ogden, at Watt’s urging, had created a program to help contend with the situation Watt helped document, and that served as a model for Wilcox.

“I’m so freaking proud of them. They’ve been so progressive in recognizing the need, identifying it and then providing solutions that work,” Wilcox said.

Now, as HB 23 has progressed through the Legislature, Wilcox said he’s received messages of support from law enforcement officials.

“I think our culture is evolving nationally in our understanding of the importance of mental health, in general. There are programs like this that are sprouting up in states across the country,” Wilcox said.

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