Firefighters, as essential frontline workers, are responsible for protecting property and human casualties in our communities. Due to the high-risk nature of their profession, firefighters are susceptible to a variety of illnesses, injuries, and disorders, including mental health issues. In Canada, communities and municipalities are served by firefighters full-time paid and volunteer capacities. The combination of contextual elements in rural regions may contribute to differential exposures, potentially heightening mental illness among this group. Workplace traumatic events, which are defined as Critical incidents (CI), frequently impact the mental well-being of emergency response personnel negatively, inducing symptoms of posttraumatic stress injury (PTSI), alcohol use disorders (AUD) and other traumatic responses. Mental health disorders are more prevalent among first responders in Canada compared to the general population, with an estimated 44% of them exhibiting signs of one or more mental disorders. Firefighter’s problems should be understood first when developing solutions, and solutions must be created with relevance to the firefighting occupational context. Employing integrated knowledge translation (iKT) as a research methodology engages all stakeholders and knowledge users in creating customized tools and solutions that specifically targets the needs of departments and individual firefighters. Integrated knowledge translation refers to collaboration between researchers and decision-makers throughout the research process.

The purpose of this cross-sectional non-experimental research is to examine and identify mental health burden and identify how different predictors identified impact mental health of firefighters working for the Niagara West Fire and Emergency Service (NWFES) located in Lincoln, Ontario. The primary research objective will be to characterize and identify impacts of mental health. The two questions that will answer this objective are (a) to quantify mental health burden, and (b) identify how age and years of service impact firefighter mental health. The secondary objective will be to understand the barriers and facilitators of developing a research partnership in occupational health and safety research.