Brian From talks with Matt Blair, CEO and co-founder of The Well Resource Center, a Chicago nonprofit he and his wife started nearly nine years ago to support the mental health of first responders and their families. Matt explains how listening to neighbors on the city’s Northwest Side, where about 30 percent of Chicago’s protective services employees live, revealed a crisis: in 2018, the Chicago Police Department reported a suicide rate 60 percent higher than any other law enforcement agency in the country. He describes how first responders often keep the trauma they see bottled up to protect the people they love, and how isolation, long shifts, and missed holidays strain families. The Well offers free counseling funded entirely by private donors, alongside basketball, yoga, roll call visits, and couples retreats, all designed to build trust with a community that doesn’t give it easily. Matt invites listeners to the organization’s eighth annual gala on November 5 at Joe’s Live in Rosemont, and to learn more at thewellrc.org.