The tragic deaths of two children at a Laval daycare center were a sordid reminder of the horror facing first responders. A paramedic from Urgences-santé and a Montreal police officer who experienced post-traumatic shock agreed to testify in the hope of breaking down mental health taboos.
A paramedic from Urgences-santé who has been treated for more than two years for post-traumatic stress disorder calls on first responders to prioritize their mental health despite the deep attachment to their profession.
“Today, I’m proud to have tears, because it’s part of the fact that I’m a human,” says Benoit Touchette bluntly.
This advanced care paramedic could return next May to the profession he has been practicing for 32 years.
He now seeks to reassure those who hesitate to recognize their weaknesses.
“We shouldn’t be afraid or embarrassed by what happens to us,” he insists.
Benoit Touchette himself hit a wall in the summer of 2018, after being rushed to the scene of a child’s death.
“It’s not much,” he told himself at the time. I got back on the road. I thought about it [à l’intervention] in the next two, three days. […] I managed to put this in a drawer and close the lid. »
hear screams
However, the sad event resurfaced in his memory two years later when the Urgences-santé communications team called on him to raise public awareness at the dawn of summer.
“I had to get up from my workstation, go and vomit in the toilet, the diarrhea, soaking wet. The smells, the tactile sensations of the event came back into my hands. Screams. I heard people screaming, and yet I was alone, ”recalls the father of the family.
tumble
In the months that followed, various symptoms such as night terrors and nightmares began to appear.
Benoit Touchette was unaware that it was all related to his trauma, believing it was burnout.
After a vacation, the paramedic’s condition worsened.
“For the first time in my life, every time I got up in the morning, when I made the decision to go to work, I threw up two or three times,” he says. I was crying all the way to work. »
Worried, those around him encouraged him to seek help, but he was reluctant.
“It was to accept being in the role of patient, the one who receives the help, and not the one who gives it, he mentions. It was the most difficult stage. »
Then came the day of December 28, 2020.
“I’m going back to work, my boss is waiting for me. Helen [Brouillet, psychologue chez Urgences-santé] is online. She said to me: “Benoit, you’re not coming home today. It’s finish. You take care of yourself.” Without them, I wouldn’t be here today,” he says, overcome by sobs.
Reverse role
Mr. Touchette then undertook a long process of rehabilitation.
The Center for Trauma Studies, which has an agreement with Urgences-santé, has also followed him in his progress.
In therapy, he was immersed in various situations with varying degrees of intensity.
The goal was to “see when I took my call, to name the things I felt, like in a debriefing with a peer helper after a real call,” points out Mr. Touchette.
The last simulation was also one that was very similar to the event that he had marked, in the summer of 2018.
more understanding
This treatment deliberately seeks to create “prolonged exposures to traumatic memories,” argues Steve Geoffrion, co-director at the Center for Trauma Studies.
” It helps [les patients] to make peace”, he adds, indicating that the success rate of this intervention is around 50%.
According to Mr. Geoffrion, the most recent scientific advances make it possible to better explain the suffering of patients.
“We understand more […] how neurological and even biological responses can promote the development of post-traumatic stress disorder,” he argues.
Mr. Touchette was finally gradually reintegrated into his workplace. “It was to go to the operations centre, after that to put on my uniform, to look at myself in the mirror. »
He then had to find his ease to survey the ground, without doing any intervention. Something he accomplished last spring.
After a killing, he agrees to put “one knee on the ground”
A police officer has control over his emotions after years of work
Photo QMI Agency, Joël Lemay
Over the course of his numerous interventions in the uniform of the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal, Philipe Medeiros has learned to control the symptoms of anxiety that overwhelm him. He now wants to help his brothers in arms.
Relying on the psychological help he received, a Montreal police officer found the strength to “kneel down” and temporarily hang up his uniform after being turned upside down by a violent family massacre.
Philipe Medeiros was called to an “unusual” number of horror scenes in 2019. His record: at least 5 homicides and 6 suicides.
His resilience finally reached its limit when he arrived at the scene of the triple murder of a mother and her two children. Completely drained, he took three weeks off.
“Since I had this awareness of being able to put one knee on the ground, I put it down, illustrates the policeman, met at the headquarters of the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM). I was able to get through. »
“Because of all the psychological help I’ve had [préalablement], I was able to do the right things before, during and after. I think it’s very important in the prevention of trauma, ”he says.
With hindsight, the patroller considers that he could have taken this break long before.
In 2016, Mr. Medeiros was suddenly struck with painful memories of his past, just before a couple’s therapy session.
“I saw deaths, events in my childhood, traumatic events, I started to cry. I had no idea what was going on,” he describes.
The patrol officer then turned to the Police Personnel Assistance Program, but did not stop working.
“It helped me a lot psychologically,” he says. I was missing a little something and I went to find it in yoga and meditation. »
less suffering
Drawing on his own experience, Philipe Medeiros has been touring neighborhood police stations for about three years to encourage other police officers to seek help before it’s too late.
“The more we talk about it, the less people will suffer in silence”, summarizes the agent Medeiros, insisting on the fact that it is necessary to know the existing help resources well to face overwhelming situations.
Otherwise, “it will take longer to recover or we will use defense mechanisms to protect ourselves,” observes the 35-year-old man.
The growing stress
Nevertheless, tragedies can affect the police, without them even being involved, raised Philipe Medeiros, in an interview the same day that two children were killed in Laval.
“When there are family dramas in other posts, often I’ll call the sergeant and say, ‘If there’s anything, your guys can call me, I’ve been through something similar,” he says.
“We are able to create a scenario of what happened, underlines the agent. When you hear that on the air and another policeman goes there, all the stress goes up inside of us. »
They are more likely to want help
Police officers and paramedics are more inclined to recognize the stress caused by their job, a new reality that is pushing organizations to improve their assistance resources.
“The culture has changed,” says Hélène Brouillet, psychologist at Urgences-santé.
“I think it’s much more accepted and known, all that is post-incident reaction, adds the psychologist at the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM), Louis-Francis Fortin. People talk about it more and judge less. »
As proof, the number of employees at Urgences-santé who said they had been exposed to high-stress events exploded.
It reached 620 in 2022, i.e. almost triple the balance sheet of 2018. For each declaration, a follow-up is done.
“I think that today we detect more quickly, observes Mme Brouillet. There are people for whom the process will take less time, because taken from the start. »
Refine the offer
The finding is similar to the SPVM. The Police Personnel Assistance Program (PAPP) recorded more than 5,000 individual counseling sessions last year, an increase of approximately 50% compared to 2017.
For years, the SPVM, which has five full-time psychologists, has been doing everything it can to fine-tune the supervision of its agents.
Upstream, psychological first aid training has also been developed.
Private partnerships have also been established to respond to requests for assistance. A police officer currently has to wait, in non-urgent cases, four to six weeks to see an in-house psychologist.
Always more
Experts agree that new resources will be needed to support first responders.
“If we could continue even more in prevention, perhaps we would need to be there less on the third line,” suggests Mr. Fortin.
For meme Brouillet, the growing number of peer helpers and the addition of a psychologist at Urgences-santé are steps in the right direction.
“The project must be carried by the base, by people who have been there, and who believe in it, she underlines. That’s my goal. »