The month of June has a very special meaning for the River Valley Resilience Retreat.
June 27 marks National Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) Day across Canada, with the entire month being observed as PTSD Awareness Month.
River Valley Resilience Retreat (RVRR) was founded in 2019 by former Prince Albert Firefighter Jeff Reeder, who now serves as the executive director and Michelle McKeaveney. The goal of RVRR was to establish a permanent, safe, secluded year round space for public safety personnel, armed forces and veterans and their families to rest and recover.
Reeder says the idea to found the retreat came to be after he had a long career with the Prince Albert Fire Department and overcame a post-traumatic incident himself.
“I suffered from a post-traumatic stress injury myself, and when I was going through that process, there weren’t any resources like this. I felt like I was on my own, isolated on an island, and I wanted to create a resource that was there to kind of help guide people through a process and try to normalize, you know, accessing resources and know that it’s an injury, just like a broken leg that requires particular resources to recover from.
“Throughout my career, I spent almost 20 years with the Prince Albert Fire Department, and I was written off very early because of my injury, saying that I’d never be back. I worked hard and proved everybody wrong that I can get back, and I put in another 12 years off of that.”
According to a Stats Canada report from 2023, 64.4 percent of adults in Canada experience at least one potentially psychologically traumatic event (PPTE). Some examples of PPTEs include transportation accidents, physical assaults, a life-threatening illness or injury and sexual assault.
Overall, 8.5 percent of adults in Canada screened positive for PTSD.
Reeder says a critical part of supporting a loved one is understanding what their needs are in support at that moment in time.
“Communication is key to understand first that what your loved one is going through is normal, but it’s not them. It’s a response to trauma. If you both get on the same page and understand when those triggers happen, how to support that individual, that they need some space and to utilize tools to overcome that trigger, whatever they’re responding to is part of the process, right? To have your loved ones, your family, your children understand that it’s an injury that takes some support and help to get through, but it’s possible to get through it.”
According to a 2024 study from the Canadian Institute for Public Safety Research and Treatment, 44.5 per cent of Canadian public safety personnel screen positive for one or more mental health disorders with 23.2 per cent of those screen positive for PTSD.
Reeder says it’s important for public safety personnel to take care of their mental health before it becomes a much larger problem such as PTSD.
“In our professions in emergency services, we experience trauma on a daily basis. As professionals, we need to be more aware that that is something that can occur, and we need to be more hands-on on dealing with the accumulative effects of trauma, and that comes from being more preventative, and doing stuff earlier on to help process that trauma as it occurs, and not wait until you have a diagnosed injury that requires a significant resources.”
More plans for PTSD Awareness month will be announced by RVRR in the coming days.
The City of Prince Albert has proclaimed June as PTSD Awareness Month.
editorial@paherald.sk.ca
