First responders committing suicide in Canada tied to PTSD

11 first responders have killed themselves in the past ten weeks
Global News
By James Armstrong and Laura Zilke
July 16, 2014

TORONTO – In the past 10 weeks, 11 Canadians whose job it is to confront the most violent, traumatic situations have reportedly killed themselves.

Seven of these first responders – four police officers, two paramedics and one federal corrections staff member – were in Ontario, according to the Tema Conter Memorial Trust, an organization that promotes mental-health awareness among Canada’s first responders.

“It’s a national tragedy, if you ask me,” said Vince Savoia, a former paramedic and founder of the Tema Conter trust.

“What angers me most is some organizations truly believe that if the suicide does not occur at work then it’s obviously not job-related.”

Savoia attributes some of these suicides to post-traumatic stress disorder or similar mental-health issues.

Savoia quit emergency services in 1992, but wasn’t diagnosed with PTSD until 2000.

Savoia set out on a cross-country tour to talk about PTSD and mental-health issues among first responders on April 28.

At the same time, he made a point of tracking the number of people in that field who killed themselves – because no one else was counting, he says.

“Nobody wants to talk about this, nobody is tracking the stats,” Savoia said. “So we made a conscientious decision, that during the tour, we wanted to pay attention to exactly what was going on.”

They were shocked by what they found: Over the next ten weeks, he said, 11 first responders killed themselves. Savoia collects the data by relying on reports from the emergency personnel community across Canada.
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