Over his 19-year career, Chris has been impacted by some of the traumatic incidents he has attended. Sadly, in 2016, he suffered a mental breakdown. Today, he is sharing his story to raise awareness of mental health and the importance of breaking the silence around mental health struggles. 

Before his mental breakdown, Chris was feeling depressed, angry and hopeless. His crewmate had noticed his mental health deteriorating and encouraged him to get help. He self-referred to occupational health and had begun counselling when one day, eight years ago, he broke down whilst sitting behind the wheel of an ambulance parked up at Heswall Station. 

He said: “Pressures from work were influencing my mental state and I was going through a lot of personal stuff at the time. It was coming up to the tenth anniversary of a fatal coach crash I’d been involved in whilst on holiday in Malaysia in 2006. My breakdown just happened – my colleague looked at me and asked if I was ok and I just burst into tears and felt empty. We attended a job after this but I knew I couldn’t continue, so my senior paramedic team leader (SPTL) met me at Heswall Ambulance Station. We talked things through, and I went home.” 

Chris was off work for three months. During that time, he was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and continued his counselling sessions. Talking of his sessions, he said; “I was quite apprehensive about them at first. However, once I’d got the first session over, I felt that I was able to speak to someone independent, who would listen, and not be judgemental. They helped me realise that I’d not learned how to deal with things that had occurred in the past and I’d just put them in little boxes and tried to forget. Now, I know counselling isn’t for everyone, but it helped me deal with a lot of things I’d not dealt with.” 

Fast forward to now and Chris’ mental health has improved since his breakdown, and he has found ways to manage those tough days. He explained: “I have not had a day off sick since my return to work back in September 2016 as I now have coping measures in place to help me deal with certain incidents we attend. Out of work, I use photography as a release as well as my love of rallying.” 

Chris is now using his experience to help his fellow colleagues and has become the health and wellbeing champion for the local area he responds in (Wirral and West Cheshire), in the hope of making a difference. He said: “It’s important to raise awareness of mental health as it is part of us all. In some form or another, we have some kind of mental health problem, be it anxiety, depression, PTSD etc. The stigma attached to mental health has been slowly eradicated, but sadly there are still people who are suffering, who don’t know where to turn to for help and feel that they can’t talk to their friends, family, managers or peers about it.” 

He continued; “NWAS has brought the mental health and wellbeing of their staff to the forefront over the past few years and the recent introduction of health and wellbeing champions is a positive move forward, especially for road staff. Of course, our trauma risk management (TRIM) assessors have been around for a while now – this is a peer-delivered risk assessment and ongoing support system. It’s used to understand reactions to traumatic incidents and to conduct risk assessments, aiming to identify if anyone would benefit from a referral to medical support.” 

Looking back now, Chris wishes he hadn’t waited so long to get help and wants to emphasise the importance of seeking help early. He added, “One thing I will say to those reading this, please don’t suffer in silence like I did for a long, long time. Reach out to your peers, your friends, colleagues or if you don’t feel you can speak to them, reach out to your local health and wellbeing champion.”