The Saanich Police Department has partnered with Wounded Warriors Canada to provide mental-health support for its employees.
Wounded Warriors Canada is a charitable group with programs for workplace-related trauma and other conditions experienced by veterans, first responders and their families. In April, the group announced a partnership with Royal Canadian Marine Search and Rescue.
Programs can include group therapy and counselling in a clinical setting, said Saanich police Const. Markus Anastasiades.
“Like lots of other districts, we do have members off on stress leave and leave related to [post-traumatic stress disorder] and exposure to traumatic incidents,” he said. “This is one key component of helping them return to work and also to make members more resilient when being exposed to traumatic events.”
The Saanich Police Department has also partnered with Wounded Warriors Canada to become the first police agency in B.C. to offer “trauma-resiliency” training to help its members cope with the impact of traumatic events.
The training was created by Tim Black, a University of Victoria associate professor of counselling psychology and national clinical adviser for Wounded Warriors Canada, and Alex Sterling, a registered clinical counsellor at UVic.
Anastasiades said Wounded Warriors Canada has provided its program for several years to first responders throughout Canada, but police have only recently started to get involved.
The group-based training involves understanding how the body deals with trauma in order to help overcome it.
“That part of your body, you can’t control it, you just have to be able to deal with it after the fact and [have] tools and resources afterward to deal with it — and processing things that come into your mind that you can’t unsee and you can’t unstick them,” Anastasiades said.
A Monday training session included Oak Bay and Central Saanich police and the Central Saanich Fire Department, as well as the Saanich Police Department’s civilian members and reserves.
Black told CHEK News that exposure to trauma is part of the everyday experience of first responders, but they don’t always understand its impact on them. “They feel like they’re going crazy. They feel like something must be wrong with them.”
That’s where education can help, Black said. “There’s some very natural, understandable processes.”
Anastasiades, who spent four years as a traffic officer before becoming the department’s media spokesman, said he has seen his share of terrible sights, including deaths. He got help through a program called “Road to Mental Readiness,” he said.
“That helped me get through seeing a couple of incidents that I had to deal with and really helped pave the way to show that there is no stigma involved in talking about this anymore.
“Gone are those days, which is good.”
Saanich Police Chief Scott Green agreed. “We just want to ensure that they feel good about coming forward and telling us they’ve been exposed to traumatic events and getting the support that they need from us,” he told CHEK News.
Saanich police hope other departments will get on board with Wounded Warriors Canada.
“It’s really just to start spreading the word that this opportunity is out there for other agencies and first responders in British Columbia to start accessing the services provided,” Anastasiades said.
