Three current or former first responders have died by suicide in the past two weeks, and a Forest Lake nonprofit built to catch people in exactly this kind of freefall says it has been working nonstop to help survivors and colleagues process the losses. The Invisible Wounds Project says the deaths include an EMT in western Wisconsin, a law enforcement officer in the Arrowhead region, and a former Minneapolis police officer who had struggled with PTSD.
According to MPR News, Russ Hanes with the Invisible Wounds Project identified the EMT’s death and the law enforcement officer’s death in the Arrowhead region, while the nonprofit Heroes Helping Heroes MN identified the third person as a former Minneapolis officer. Hanes said the organization tends to get busier whenever there is a string of deaths like this one, and he believes some regional first responders who have died by suicide may never come to the organization’s attention because of lingering stigma around mental health in these professions.
A Facility Built for the Weight First Responders Carry
The Invisible Wounds Project is based in Forest Lake and supports law enforcement officers, firefighters, EMS workers, 911 dispatchers, frontline medical staff and veterans, per the same MPR News report. Its 12,000-square-foot facility includes a gym, an art studio, a wood shop and a therapy office, spaces designed to give frontline workers a place to be heard, understood, and find belonging rather than process trauma in isolation.
The organization runs on four full-time staff and has grown largely through outreach and word of mouth rather than large marketing budgets. That grassroots growth has not slowed the pace of need: the project now performs suicide-crisis interventions for current or former first responders and veterans almost every day, a sharp jump from where it stood just a year ago.
Crisis Interventions Have More Than Doubled
Last year the Invisible Wounds Project performed about three-and-a-half suicide-crisis interventions per week; it is now handling roughly eight per week, MPR News reports. Those numbers track with figures the organization shared earlier in the year with Audacy, when Hanes said the project served more than 2,000 people and conducted more than 125 suicide-crisis interventions in 2025 alone. Hanes told the outlet the organization was on pace to exceed those 2025 totals in 2026, potentially tripling its crisis interventions…