هنا لندن-First responders from 9/11 and Las Vegas in Edmonton

2018-09-22 05:42:40

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First responders will be gathering in Edmonton, the capital city of Alberta, next month for a conference on their work and their lives.

The symposium on mental health for first responders is expected to attract hundreds of participants from all over North America.

“It’s important now, more than ever, that we foster a community of support”

It is particularly timely in Edmonton where the suicides of two firefighters in the past month have left more questions than answers.

“It’s a really scary time, we’re all quite vulnerable right now,” Daniel Sundahl, the symposium’s organizer, told CBC Radio yesterday.

“Often when these things happen, they come as a surprise and we didn’t know, or there was no warning. Co-workers, family members and friends are really worried, ‘Who will be the next person to do that?’ Sundahl said.

“It’s important now, more than ever, that we foster a community of support, that (we share) that there is treatment and there are ways out.”

The event, happening on October 27 and 28, at the River Cree Casino on the Enoch Cree Nation.

The Peer Recovery and Resiliency Symposium is sold out.

It will feature first responders from 9/11 or the 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas. They will share how they healed from their own mental health wounds.

First responder Daniel Sundahl, with some of his artwork behind him, is the organizer of the Peer Recovery and Resiliency Symposium in Edmonton on October 27 and 28, 2018.

“These are first responders that have been involved in some of the most harrowing events of our time, but what they’re going to speak about is their post-traumatic recovery and resiliency,” Sundahl said.

“So other first responders can see these people are like me, they’re no different than me, and they’ve gone through some horrific events. And they’ve come out OK.”

Sundahl is a paramedic based in Leduc, Alberta, just south of Edmonton.

He is now a mental health advocate for his colleagues, following his own struggle with suicidal thoughts and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) that were the result of scenes he’d witnessed during 16 years on the job.

“There are lots of first responders that are scared to come forward. It is still looked at as a weakness in many organizations, to the point where many first responders don’t want to confess that they have a mental health injury — which is really, really sad.”

Daniel Sundahl has expressed some of the devastating moments that first respondent bear witness to, in his artwork.

From the paramedic who appears in a moment of grief, with the body of a young man lying on a stretcher in front of him, or the haunting image of a patient peering out of an ambulance door, while paramedics work on a real-life victim in the background, Sundahl provides a view to the heartbreak and the challenge.

His paintings, which have been displayed in Edmonton galleries, will be on display at the Symposium.

(With files from CBC and Daniel Sundahl)