What's interesting is that it's a news article.
Because it doesn't have to be a news story, it should be something simple enough to recognise that a mental health issue is a health issue.
On Monday, the Free Press ran a story reporting that the Manitoba Workers' Compensation Board has confirmed that the death of Winnipeg Fire and Paramedic Preston Heinbigner was the result of a workplace injury.
Preston Heinbigner, a Winnipeg Fire and Paramedic.
Heinbigner took his own life on April 9 after battling post-traumatic stress disorder.
“As far as the firefighters are concerned, there's no question that the things he was exposed to on the job were the primary factors that disturbed him mentally and it was just a matter of connecting the dots after his death,” Winnipeg Firefighters Union president Tom Billous said Saturday. “We feel he was vindicated. Everybody feels that way.”
He didn't need to prove his innocence, he just needed to be recognized.
Think of it this way: Two firefighters enter a burning building to search for possible victims. They're in full protective gear and hose their way through the heat and smoke, but as they make their way up the stairs to the second floor, part of the staircase collapses.
One firefighter suffered a minor back injury and is on medical leave until his injury heals.
There is no need for a news article about the fact that she was given sick leave.
The other firefighter suffered a more awkward fall and was more seriously injured, crushing two vertebrae and requiring surgery and subsequent rehabilitation. Doctors submit a report to the Bureau of Workers' Compensation, which then has the injured firefighter examined by one of its own doctors. If the firefighter's injury is deemed a compensable injury, the paperwork is completed (though perhaps slower than in an ideal world) and the world, painfully, moves on.
Again, no news article needed.
However, Preston Heinbigner was injured.
He had also fallen, but his injuries were not visible from the outside. For years, he had dealt with traumatic emergency calls.
“He was very empathetic and compassionate on the phone and had a great way of interacting with patients,” Billous said, “but we didn't fully realize the extent to which he was bringing home and plaguing the unnatural things we were seeing.”
Emergency services are changing, there is much greater awareness of the toll of trauma faced by paramedics, paramedics themselves are speaking out about what was previously a much more private and personal struggle, and services are slowly improving.
But that doesn't mean compensation for those injuries will be easy to obtain.
“Today, our members are more likely to file a claim than they were even two or three years ago, so that's good news. There's more awareness and acceptance among our peers of having the conversation, filing a claim, etc.,” Bilous said. “Whether it's accepted or not is another story.”
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In some ways, this is a familiar story for emergency workers: It hasn't been that long since the state's Workplace Compensation Board reluctantly acknowledged that firefighters are exposed to a variety of carcinogens while fighting fires, putting them at increased risk of cancer.
But mental illness seems to be a completely different beast, one that workers with the least power to fight for help and compensation have had to fight hardest for.
The injuries that manifest in the psyche are a tragic truth, but they are also just as real as any other injury.
Again, if local bureaucracies acknowledge that fact, it need not be news.
That should be a given.
