Sanctuary Trauma

The firefighter in this image is doing his best to manage the flame of his post-traumatic stress. Often it takes all that he has to do that and maintain the appearance of a healthy and capable emergency worker.

It’s the controllable and non-traumatic stressors that may be the catalyst that breaks everything for emergency workers and causes us to fall apart. This secondary trauma can be more damaging than the primary trauma and can be a better predictor of long-term disability. So maybe we should start focussing on how we support our public safety personal instead of being so myopic in our views of what causes the trauma in the first place.

A huge thank you to the Fort Saskatchewan Fire Department for helping me with this one and for recognizing the importance of this topic.

Stay safe everyone,

Respectfully,
DanSun

SanctuaryTrauma