Politics

Published on March 1, 2016 | by Erika Graham     Photography by Lachlan McVee

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Ontario takes action to support first responders with PTSD

Ontario has announced a new post-traumatic stress disorder strategy for first responders following an alarming suicide rate.

In the last two months alone, 10 first responders and two military members have died by suicide in Canada, according to the Tema Conter Memorial Trust, which provides assistance to first responders suffering from operational stress and post-traumatic stress disorder.

“In the span of less than a year, I’ve been touched by suicide twice,” said Wade MacPherson, a Peel Region Paramedic.

MacPherson said he lost his close friend last year, a fellow paramedic who suffered from work-related PTSD.

“He inspired me to get into the paramedic program,” said MacPherson. “We went to the same school, he was a mentor.”

Just months later, a second co-worker of his, Martin Wood, who served 25 years as a paramedic, was found dead in his car.

MacPherson is now an advocate for mental health awareness in his field and aims to challenge the stigma that currently exists amongst paramedics.

“A lot of the time we’re very hesitant to admit that we’re not okay,” said MacPherson. “We’re trying to get at a shift in culture amongst paramedics, to say that it’s okay not to be okay.”

According to Lynne Urszenyi, paramedic program co-ordinator at Humber College, it has only been a couple of years since this stigma has been publicly challenged.

Urszenyi said that paramedics have been concealing their struggles with emotional stress and PTSD since the beginning of the profession.

“The main part of our education is to try and break that way of thinking and let our students know that it’s okay to be upset and distressed,” she said.

The paramedic program at Humber College offers students a psychology course, specifically aimed at PTSD awareness and prevention. Urszenyi also says that open communication is encouraged throughout the two-year program.

Luke Hall, a Peel Paramedic and former student at Humber College, has only been in the field for two years but he said he has already witnessed the effects of PTSD on his co-workers.

“My first contract in fact, I was covering for someone for 11 months because they were on stress leave,” said Hall.

Hall said he is thankful for his education at Humber College because the program is working hard to encourage students to come forward and talk about any issues they may be facing.

According to MacPherson and Urszenyi however, the suicide rate amongst first responders is a crisis that also needs to be dealt with on a provincial level.

One aspect of the government’s proposed strategy is presumptive legislation for PTSD, which means that a worker who is suffering from the illness will be granted sick leave and compensation.

Unlike the current system, which requires workers to provide evidence that their PTSD is a work-related injury, presumptive legislation will allow workers to take a sick leave without a detailed explanation.

“There are a lot of triggers with PTSD. Different sounds, different smells, different sights,” said MacPherson. “In the process of questioning them to prove that it was a workplace injury, they have essentially re-traumatized the victim.”

MacPherson and educators like Urszenyi are working alongside the government to change this dialogue and update the system to meet the modern needs of first responders.

“If they are diagnosed with PTSD… then just assume it was obtained on the job,” said MacPherson. “I’ve lost two mentors to suicide and I’m sick of it happening. I’m sick of losing friends, brothers, to suicide.”

 

 

 


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