New resources are on the way to help NWT Firefighters deal with the mental health struggles that can come from their dangerous occupation.
In their day to day, firefighters can be exposed to hazardous situations on a moment’s notice. High stress, physical dangers, and life or death situations can cause a great deal of anguish on the mind of a first responder. That is why, as announced on the morning of January 9th, the Northwest Territories Fire Chiefs Association (NWTFCA) is partnering with Wounded Warriors Canada (WWC) to greatly improve the mental health support offered to firefighters.
(Photo by Connor Pitre/True North FM Staff)
Across Canada, there already exists many support structures for first responders. However, Wounded Warriors and the NWTFCA felt that these services are not enough to help the men and women in Northern regions who may need more culturally specific assistance, or who are located in a more isolated community.
This partnership is focusing on four key areas of support:
- Resiliency: WWC will be working to provide Northern firefighters and their families with the ability to better handle the mentally troubling situations that they can sometimes find themselves in.
- Peer-to-Peer programs: The personnel behind these programs are trained to be confident and capable supporters. They will be additionally trained on how to better recognize and respond to signs of stress and trauma in themselves and others.
- Leadership Educational Programs: These programs will teach how to understand trauma, what can be considered a traumatic event, and how an individual can become traumatized in the first place.
- Recovery: Group based programs that can help guide individuals and their families in recovery from post-traumatic stress, injury, and illness.
Scott Maxwell, a representative from Wounded Warriors Canada, explained that these services will be available in several different formats, including online, in person, and over the phone.
“We have digital asynchronous access to training, where you would watch a clinically produced course online, so it helps with scale and geography.
“If there’s any benefit from COVID in the mental health space, there have been immense changes positively because of what we learned over the pandemic. We didn’t have any digital asynchronous offerings prior to 2020. Now we have where a good percentage of our services can be accessed anywhere anytime.
“So we have the on demand and online service, then we have a virtual offering, where it’s actually clinically delivered virtually, and then we have in-person. So really it’s about scalability and access. The old way of fifteen people in a room at a time is great, but how are you going to do that in a country this size, let alone a Territory this size?”
Across the North, the NWTFCA represents 33 communities and 25 different fire departments. They are hoping that this partnership with Wounded Warriors properly reflects their commitment to taking care of the mental health of their first responders.
