Leaderboard

I appreciate the support and suggestions but I have been down this road, too. I started with our Employee Assistance Program which was hysterical. While their counselors might do very well for the average office or factory worker, I saw immediately that they were ill prepared for the difficulties I was seeking help for. Let's face facts, a big part of what we do in our job is reading others. Some of us study body language and the science involved while others just do it without fully understanding how it works. It becomes instinctual. I clearly made both of the counselors I tried to work with very uncomfortable. Whether that discomfort was due to the situations I described, the realization that they were in over their heads, or something else entirely, they were of no help. I moved on to an actual psychiatrist and saw some improvement there. Mysteriously, I was declared "well" and cut loose. I wasn't sure, but went with it anyway. I went back briefly but thanks to the changes in insurance and co-pays, continued therapy is now out of financial reach. That is how I wound up looking around online and for groups. I figured they were better than nothing. I found this article this morning and was deeply disappointed to see that the person in charge of finding and helping those that were at risk within our profession in her area succumbed to the very problem she was trying to prevent.

You're missing the point Mikey, it's not the number of suicides, it's the number per 100,000. In Canada the national average in 2009 was 11.8 per 100,000 people. The suicide rate for first responders is more than double the national average. Why is there such a discrepancy? The only real difference from the national average is the carreer. 34 people might have died in bicycle accidents, but how many million rode a bike there are far more bicycle riders out there than there are first responders? In that case, the numbers just aren't as significant and you're comparing apples to oranges.