It wasn’t until retiring after a 20-year-long firefighting career did Chaplain Tom Freborg understand the mental health crisis that first responders suffer from. To aid first responders, Freborg created Rise Up & Fight Ministries, which offers aid to first responders that are afflicted by thoughts of suicide and depression.
“I go in and do formal trainings about divorce, addiction, eye movement and desensitization post-traumatic stress disorder therapies and what they do and how they work,” Freborg told The Weekly Villager on July 3. “I also teach coping strategies, things that the young guys can do to try and stay ahead of it and the things that the older guys can do to try to ease some of the symptoms.”
An educational non-profit organization, Freborg visits fire departments throughout Portage, Cuyahoga, Summit and Mahoning Counties to offer a one-hour educational seminar to first responders on how to address their ongoing battle for mental health. In addition to Freborg’s one hour seminar, he also enlists the services of a health & wellness professionals who provide nutritional tips as well.
All sessions by the Ministry are done pro-bono, and Freborg also schedules one-on-one sessions with first responders seeking additional help.
“I get random intake calls — my friend told me to call you, my captain gave me your card, I saw a flier somewhere,” he noted. “These guys, they can’t talk to their peers, they are worried about their job. There is a stigma too, that goes along with it, so I am a neutral third party.”
In Freborg’s seminars, he preaches three approaches to seeking mental health support: a spiritual, mental and physical side.
Through the mental side, he encourages people to enter cognitive behavioral therapy or talk to someone they consider to be a pure support person.
In the physical component, Freborg instructs people to routinely engage in physical exercise as well as healthy eating.
“We are just dumping gasoline on our PTSD fire, not to mention we are gaining tons of weight because we are drinking our sugar on top of the cortisol weight gain that we are getting because of the stress of the job. So, exercise and eat right,” he said.
Lastly, Freborg talks to first responders about connecting with a higher power or someone they feel accountable to in order to hold themselves to a higher standard.
“I always get down to the root, because you always have to find the root and pull it,” he added. “It is the same for everyone and it is a self-love issue, it is a self-worth, self-esteem issue, every responder might really dig deep. They are really actually vulnerable and that is what comes out.”
Having worked as a firefighter/EMT in the Ravenna area for 20 years, Freborg said that he did not truly realize how much the stress of the job really affected him until his retirement when he acknowledged that is when he sought additional counseling.
Through counseling and his own research, Freborg said that he discovered firefighter suicides double the amount of line of duty deaths and 85% of firefighters are three times more likely to divorce.
Freborg said that when he visited a mental health retreat over the weekend in Columbus several years ago, he saw just how much first responders needed help.
“I was just showing them a lot of empathy and love because I understood what they were going through and these guys were really rattled, after talking with them, I remember that we had a break on the Saturday sessions and I went out to my hotel room and I cried for these guys,” he noted. “I cried for them, and I realized I had to do something.”
Freborg founded his Ministry just over two years ago and was just recently ordained as a Chaplain at the beginning of 2025.
Through his work with fire departments across Northeast Ohio, he has sought to make an impact with first responders who need help confronting their own personal crises.
“I feel like I am doing the work that I have been called to do,” he said. “It is what keeps me going and pressing forward especially through my own mental health struggles and it helps me heal my trauma and my pain, healing others. I will get a compliment from a fire captain at a fire department, and I heard one at one time say, “Tom, ever since you’ve been down here, my guys have been closer.” That is where I find the reward.
