Support grows for first responders’ mental health

BRANDON — Grady Stephenson was one of the first responders on the scene after a semi-truck hit a minibus full of seniors on their way to a casino, on the Trans-Canada Highway north of Carberry, in June 2023.

The tragedy claimed the lives of 17 people.

Stephenson, deputy fire chief of the Carberry fire department, said he will never forget that day, but credits Project Resilience 911 with giving him mental health support he desperately needed. It’s why he became a session facilitator, alongside Brandon Police Service Const. Amanda Conway.

“Doing those presentations is really helpful and healing for me,” Stephenson said.

“If I can help others prepare and be able to deal with those kinds of situations — whether it’s a call of that magnitude or something’s bugging you about a minor call that was hard to deal with — helping you pull through that is a huge thing for me,” he said.

Project Resilience 911 is a mental health resource for first responders, front-line workers and military personnel, said Conway, who co-founded the initiative.

The goal is to promote mental health services and education so first responders can acknowledge when they need help, she said.

“First responders are dealing with cumulative trauma,” said Conway. “Over our careers we’ll probably have more than 1,000 singular traumatic events, and we have to acknowledge what we’re feeling and what we’re seeing. Some people still feel like they have to suffer in silence and suffer alone,” she said.

Conway got into policing after earning a degree in social work, working in probation services and counselling at Assiniboine College.

About 10 years ago, while she was at the college, she met an RCMP officer who shared her dream of providing mental health services. Even though the Mountie was transferred out of province, Conway kept the idea alive.

“One of the biggest pieces is giving people the signs and the symptoms so they can recognize in themselves, or in their peers, if someone is struggling, so that we can intervene as early as we can,” she said.

The longer mental health is ignored, the worse it becomes.

Project Resilience 911 became a reality about five years ago through the BPS wellness team. Today, it has a board of directors with 12 members and a support team that includes representatives from rural fire departments, Brandon Fire and Emergency Services, Blue Hills RCMP, Brandon Correctional Centre, Canadian Forces Base Shilo and personnel from the 911 dispatch centre.

“We can assess what someone’s needs are and make referrals based on that, whether it’s just peer support or finding counsellors who work directly with first responders,” Conway said.

Conway conducts debriefing sessions with first responders — and in the case of the Carberry crash, that included community members who stopped to help.

Stephenson said he was at that session.

“I can’t even begin to express the value of what that did for me, and I think everybody else benefited from having the two groups together,” he said.

“That was sort of the game changer, when I was at the point to say, ‘I want to be part of this so I can help other first responders as well.’”

Almost two years later, Stephenson and Conway have hosted more than a dozen sessions in rural fire departments and communities as far north as Thompson and east of Winnipeg, preparing first responders for how “to process and cope when dealing with traumas,” said Stephenson.

“Because you’re never going to forget it. It’s just how you deal with it when it comes up,” he said.

After the crash, Stephenson said he took a break from the North Cypress Langford Fire Department and a three-month leave of absence from his job as the town’s chief administrative officer.

He “engaged counselling” and was given a prescription through his health practitioner to deal with some of the symptoms.

“It’s all been beneficial to me,” he said. “I think showing vulnerability is still a tough thing for a lot of people and that’s why we do the presentations, to try to break down some of those barriers and convince people that, yes, it’s OK to tell someone how you’re feeling and that something’s bothering you.”

It’s critical that police officers find a work-life balance by having interactions outside of their patrols, Brandon police Chief Tyler Bates said.

“If you’re only talking to the people who are in the back of your police car day to day, you can get pretty jaded and pretty negative with respect to life in general,” Bates said.

“The first instinct for most police officers is to retreat, withdraw… that’s the absolute worst thing that you can do if you’re in this profession.”

All sessions and workshops hosted by Project Resilience 911 are free; throughout the year members hold fundraisers to pay for advertising material and to hold certain programs, such as a suicide prevention workshop.

— Brandon Sun