Post traumatic stress disorder cross-Canada tour kicks off in Vaughan

Yorkregion.com
Feb. 22, 2014
By Tim Kelly

For more than a decade, post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has been a big part of Vince Savoia’s life.

The founder of the Tema Conter Memorial Trust, named for the woman whose homicide Mr. Savoia attended in 1988 when he was a paramedic, Mr. Savoia is on a mission to raise awareness about PTSD and to gain better mental health access and funding provided by provincial governments.

Mr. Savoia spoke at the Heroes are Human kickoff Thursday at Vaughan’s Hilton Garden Inn, announcing a 48 city, cross-Canada tour that will launch May 5 in St. John’s, NL, and wind up in Toronto July 18.

He said the purpose of the tour is to stop what he called an “obscene” situation.

"f you’re diagnosed with a mental illness, the only professional you can see is a psychiatrist and your wait time is anywhere between six months and a year. We have well-qualified pyschologists and social workers that can provide counselling services and yet we’re expected to pay for those services. So, what my vision is and what my dream is, is to have these services covered by these provincial health care plans,” he said.

He added the other purpose of the tour is to get those with PTSD to come forward and face their fears.

“When you look at the prevalence of PTSD in the population, we know that one in 8 of us will be diagnosed with post traumatic stress in our lifetime. But when we look at that rate within emergency services, it can be as high as 24 per cent. That’s what the research indicates. According to the Canadian military, apparently they’ve got this under control, they’re PTSD rate is under 10 per cent and I question that.

How is it that men and women who are in the theatre of combat and only 10 per cent are diagnosed with PTSD? I would suspect that many of them will not come forward for fear of losing their jobs, losing their livelihood. And we see that with emergency services as well. We still have this stigma that we’re working with so the tour will really try to deal with that stigma, encourage people to come forward and talk about their experiences,” he said.

One man who has admitted to his fear and admitted he needs help to deal with them is York Regional Police Const. Jon Carson.

Diagnosed with PTSD several years ago, it wasn’t easy for the private individual to admit he needed help, but he said he had little choice.

“It came down to a point where my wife said, there’s the door and there’s your kids, you decide. My wife’s a police officer with York Regional Police so she had an understanding of what I was going through, but I was very much in a mode where I was blaming everybody else around me when I needed to look inside internally and say, it’s me, I needed to get help,” Const. Carson said.

He said he was dealing with nightmares, anxiety , depressed moods, irritability and had to learn what his triggers were to figure out how to be a better person.

“The last five years has been a bit of a roller-coaster. I’m finally getting toward the end of it here in dealing with  it. I’ve had unbelievable support, my organization, York Regional Police, has been fantastic, my HR department. I’ve had doctors and counselors that I’ve become friends with now that I’ve relied on for support.”

He said the keys to his success are that he has learned to talk about his problems and the events he’s going through, that nobody else is going to do it for you and that only you can change the 'you' want to be and that, finally, it’s OK to cry.

"We get instilled with this as young children, big boys don’t cry and it translates to the workforce. Suck it up and move on and let’s deal with it. The relief and weight that lifts off your shoulders, when you sit down and cry it out, it feels so much better,” he said.

For Mr. Savoia, a big key is stopping the discrimination between what a physical injury is and what a psychological injury is.

"We have to stop discriminating between what a physical illness is and what a mental health illness is. So, we’re going to be calling on the provincial governments to seriously start considering better access to mental health professionals,” he said.

Nobleton resident and TV star Enrico Colatoni has been involved with the Tema Conter Trust since 2011 and was on hand to throw his weight behind the cause.

“On Flashpoint (the series he starred on), I was able to meet a whole bunch of wonderful people who openly deal with their own occupational stress. I sort of grew up having to deal with mental health, not personally, but someone in my family, my brother being a police office,” he said, in explaining his connection to the goal of bringing more public awareness and funding to PTSD.

“It’s just remarkable to me how much we take first responders for granted," he said. “You just have to look at the statistics, how many people take their own lives, drink, divorce, all that stuff that. Something as simple as a conversation might have stopped it,” he said.