Firefighter Tara Lal helps colleagues face demons after losing her brother to suicide

She also trained in suicide prevention three years ago. That wasn't easy.

When she was 17 her brother, Adam, aged 20, jumped out of the window at Oxford University.

Now she believes she has contributed to saving more lives through counselling workmates, their partners and friends about suicide prevention than she has answering 000 calls.

Her expertise is evidently needed. One firefighter, police officer or paramedic takes their own life every six weeks the ABC revealed in June. Experts warned frontline emergency workers were not getting the treatment they needed.

Now the NSW fire service is to trial a new online resource developed with her input to try and make staff better able to cope before problems begin. There is also a suicide prevention app in development.

Six months after the death the coroner forwarded Adam's suicide note with some letters attached. Later she discovered his diary, extracts from which form a poignant part of her a book Standing on My Brother's Shoulders, to be launched this week.

Ms Lal moved from London and started a new career with NSW Fire and Rescue in 2005. She is also a surf lifesaver at North Bondi Surf Life Saving Club.

Working as a firefighter sometimes prompts flashbacks.

She was based at Darlinghurst in 2009 when a suicide call came in. Someone had jumped. Her crew attended the scene and she was using a fire hose to wash down blood.

She writes: "I bend down to pick up a broken pair of glasses. I hold them in my hand and look up. I see my brother climb through his window. I see him plummet headfirst to the ground ... Controlling my need to vomit, I finish the job and climb quietly back into the truck."

She tells the Sun-Herald: "Only six months ago when I went back to England cleaning my dad's house I found more of Adam's writing and as I read that it was so obvious that he was deeply depressed.

"I thought that could really help somebody because it says so powerfully how it feels to be deeply depressed. The apathy, hopelessness and worthlessness.

"Where I use my training most is as a peer support member. It's talking to people like my fellow firefighters who are struggling and having thoughts of suicide. Mostly men, not just within the fire brigade but also out of it."

She said doing the course was cathartic. "What helped me in a way was turning towards all the fear. That gave me strength. For so many years I disassociated Adam's death from suicide. I'd hear about suicide but that wasn't my brother because he was different. He might have taken his life but he wasn't like everybody else.

"I can use what I learnt to help others. I would say I have contributed at least to saving more people's lives through talking to them about suicide prevention than I have through being an active firefighter. That gives me meaning for Adam's life. He always wanted to help people when he was alive."

Asked if she thought that was Adam's legacy, she said: "Absolutely. Definitely."

Dr Sam Harvey of the School of Psychiatry at UNSW said the Black Dog institute together with the university's Workplace Mental Health Team was involved with a trial called RAW, Resilience At Work. He said research was traditionally reactive, relating to picking up the pieces after someone became unwell.

"This is about trying to do something that makes firefighters more resilient when, inevitably, they face the difficulties that they go into with their emergency services work," Dr Harvey said.

"We have made it specifically for firefighters based around people like Tara's experience and their advice to us."

Fire stations in the trial will have iPads with a program to work through to learn mindfulness-based skills to help them understand their thoughts and emotions with simple exercises for coping with trauma.

The book launch on Thursday at North Bondi Surf Life Saving Club coincides around the first anniversary of the suicide of a surf life saver who Ms Lal said was about the same age as her brother.

"There were 300 people at my brother's funeral," she said. "They were all 19 years old at the time and many have told me it has haunted them since.

"All those kids in Bondi last year, they were about the same age. The same will be true for them. That's why I am doing it there."

Standing on My Brother's Shoulders by Tara Lal published by Watkins $22.99 available from bookstores or online.