Recommended reading to help with different topics

Law Enforcement, First Responders, and Military

The Price They Pay

The Price They Pay will attempt to return to the modern police officer something they have been lacking for a long time – humanity. Find out what it’s really like to walk the path of an emotionally or physically injured officer and why the belief that every officer is supported and cared for through the thin blue line is a fallacy.

CopShock: Surviving Posttraumatic Stress Disorder

Nightmares, flashbacks, anger, concentration problems, emotional detachment, avoidance of people and places… These are some of the signs of PTSD. CopShock prepares police officers for the aftermath of horrific trauma, helps families understand PTSD’s effect on their loved ones, tells true stories of officers-men and women-with PTSD, and offers over 200 support sources.

Emotional survival for law enforcement: A guide for officers and their families

This book is designed to help law-enforcement professionals overcome the internal assaults experience both personally and organizationally over the course of their careers.

Break Every Chain

A police officer’s battle with alcoholism, depression, and devastating loss; and the true story of how God changed his life forever

Bulletproof Spirit: The First Responder’s Essential Resource for Protecting and Healing Mind and Heart

As a thirty-year law-enforcement veteran, retired police captain, and police academy instructor, Dan Willis has witnessed the damage of emotional trauma and has made it his personal mission to safeguard and enhance the wellness and wholeness of police officers, firefighters, EMTs, emergency-room personnel, and soldiers.

Second Careers for Street Cops

Use your experience as a police officer to start a second career. A practical guide for law enforcement officers.

Armor Your Self: How To Survive A Career In Law Enforcement

This book helps law enforcement professionals armor themselves physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. This book is also for law enforcement family members to use to learn how to help your family survive this career as well.

Increasing Resilience in Police and Emergency Personnel: Strengthening Your Mental Armor

This book illuminates the psychological, emotional, behavioral, and spiritual impact of police work on police officers, administrators, emergency communicators, and their families.

Officer Safety: REDEFINED

The information in this book will give officers the knowledge and tools they need to meet both the physical and psychological threats they will encounter when they choose a career in law enforcement. This will result in better mental and physical health. Over time, the stress, negativity and traumatic events an officer sees repeatedly during the course of a law enforcement career can compromise the officer’s psychological resiliency.

Mental Health Fight Of The Heroes in Blue

This book was written by a police officer who, speaking from personal experience, and sourcing the help of trusted experts, walks anyone through the steps law enforcement officers can take to be shielded from having mental breakdowns and God forbid, become a suicide statistic. Within this resource are five key methodologies proven to increase mental clarity as a police officer.

Saving Heroes: A Warrior s Journey Through Rehabilitation

This book is a riveting story of a veteran’s quest to rescue military and first responder families from the captivity of post-traumatic stress. You’ll find simple answers to complicated problems, including how to break free from self-imprisonment, overcome thoughts of suicide, and wage spiritual warfare.

Mindful Responder

Mindful Responder combines science, stories, exercises, interviews, and firsthand experience to explore mindfulness and meditation in a practical, no-nonsense, and often hilarious manner. This is your field guide for improving resilience, fulfillment, presence, and fitness—on and off the job.

Dying for the Job: Police Work Exposure and Health

When one thinks of police work, the immediate danger of this occupation comes to mind the everyday threat of violence, death, and witnessing traumatic events in their work. Less noted however is the physical and psychological danger associated with police work, including harmful environmental exposure, stress and trauma. Based on research, the adverse health and psychological consequences of this occupation far outweigh the dangers of the street.

For Those Who Interact With Law Enforcement

Counseling Cops: What Clinicians Need to Know

Grounded in clinical research, extensive experience, and deep familiarity with police culture, this book offers highly practical guidance for psychotherapists and counselors. The authors vividly depict the pressures and challenges of police work and explain the impact that line-of-duty issues can have on officers and their loved ones.

I Love a Cop, Third Edition: What Police Families Need to Know

Police families are brave, resilient, and proud–and they face remarkable challenges, sometimes on a daily basis. Now thoroughly updated for today’s turbulent times, this is the resource that cops and their loved ones have relied on for decades.

Personal Wellness

Guts, Grit & The Grind: A MENtal Mechanics MANual: Basic Mechanics

Here you will find stories of mental health challenges of men, written by men, for men in similar circumstances – inspiring stories of resilience, recovery and transformation. With a dash of humor and mental health science, tools, and exercises, our goal is to help men help themselves, to overcome hardship and build and maintain a life worth living.

Recommended by Michelle Cimetta

Recommended by Sharon Prager 

Recommended by Sharon Prager 

Recommended By Christina Piche

Healing From Trauma & Grief

Surviving the Shadows

A Journey of Hope into Post-Traumatic Stress

Living Through Personal Crisis

This book is about the small and large losses that happen to people, experiences that plunge them into a state of adjustment. It guides those moving through the mourning process and those who are struggling with depression and other symptoms of distress as they start to realize that they are grieving their loss.

The Effects of Suicide

The Gift of Second: Healing from the Impact of Suicide

In The Gift of Second, you will: -Explore the ins and outs of grief and trauma -Release the guilt and shame survivors carry -Recognize how to take care of yourself -Gain practical tips for enduring the first year -Discover what helps other survivors -Determine when to seek professional help -Stop replaying the past and blaming yourself -START healing in a healthy way

After Suicide Loss: Coping with Your Grief

A practical guide for coping with suicide, from the first few days through the first year and beyond.

Police Suicide: Epidemic in Blue

Doctor Violanti discusses the classical studies in suicide, the accuracy and validity of police suicide rates, probable precipitating factors associated with police suicide, the impact of retirement, the idea of ‘suicide by suspect,’ the antecedents of murder-suicide, the plight of survivors of police suicide, and information and suggestions for police suicide prevention. Also discussed is the relationship between suicide and the reluctance of police officers to seek professional help.

Bruised and Wounded: Struggling to Understand Suicide

Recent events have shown again how suicide touches all of us — often when we least expect it. But how to unpack the grief that follows such a painful, and often stigmatized, death? Ron Rolheiser can help.”

Relating to Children

Beyond Tears: Living After Losing a Child

Meant to comfort and give direction to bereaved parents, Beyond Tears is written by nine mothers who have each lost a child. This revised edition includes a new chapter written from the perspective of surviving siblings.

Why Wont You Play With Me?

Why Won’t You Play With Me? is a tool to help begin the conversation with our little ones to help them understand that the PTSD is about our experiences and not about them. It is a way to help the little ones understand that you love them with all of our heart, but are struggling.

Invisible String

The Invisible String offers a very simple approach to overcoming loneliness, separation, or loss with an imaginative twist that children easily understand and embrace, and delivers a particularly compelling message in today’s uncertain times.

Gizmo’s Pawsume Guide to Mental Health

The goal of this new curriculum, written from Gizmo’s perspective, is to teach young children to care for their mental health by recognizing warning signs and developing healthy coping strategies.

The Memory Box: A Book About Grief

From the perspective of a young child, Joanna Rowland artfully describes what it is like to remember and grieve a loved one who has died. The child in the story creates a memory box to keep mementos and written memories of the loved one, to help in the grieving process.

Recommended by Gina Kiernan

Navigating Relationships

Bulletproof Marriage

Bulletproof Marriage is a 90-day devotional that applies biblical principles to support and strengthen the marriages of military members, law enforcement officers, and first responders.

Comfortable Being Uncomfortable: Having Difficult Conversations with Your Partner

This book provides couples with tools and techniques to navigate challenging conversations that foster deeper intimacy and understanding.

The Depths of Connection

Understanding the Four Levels of Intimacy delves into the intricate dynamics of human relationships, exploring the essential components that create deep, lasting bonds. This book dissects intimacy into four fundamental levels: emotional, intellectual, experiential, and physical.