Death of paramedic shines light on trauma risks
Problems began after responding to shooting at Quebec City mosque
MONTREAL— In Lucie Roy’s retelling, the chain of events that led to her daughter’s suicide began with the burst of gunshots that killed six men and injured five others in a Quebec City mosque in January 2017.
Andréanne Leblanc was on shift that Sunday night. She was one of the first paramedics to arrive at the bloody scene that greatly traumatized Canadians.
She and her work partner transported one of the victims to hospital. In the fear and confusion of that frigid winter night, as police hunted the armed and fleeing killer, they were told to prepare in case there were other victims.
Leblanc, 31, didn’t talk to her family about the experience.
That seems to have been part of her nature.
Her grieving mother wants to draw attention to the mental health problems faced by her daughter and other emergency workers in difficult or potentially distressing conditions.
A number of medical surveys and studies find paramedics are more vulnerable than other first-responders to job-related trauma.
Dr. Jonathan Douglas, a psychologist from Barrie, Ont., said police and firefighters have similar ways of dealing with the most difficult aspects of their professions.
“They try to push through it. They go back to work and they push through it and they push through it and they push through it, until they can’t push through it anymore,” he said.
After the mosque shooting, Leblanc and her partner arrived back at the station long after the other paramedics.
Roy said her daughter had to wait two or three days for a debriefing session that lasted just one hour. If she felt any initial pain, she pushed past it, burying herself in her work. In June, she took an additional job that had her working a seven-day shift in Quebec City, then travelling 350 kms to work on-call for seven days in Rimouski.
One of her first calls at the new job was to transport someone who had taken their life with a gun. Leblanc developed back pain. Exhaustion took hold.
She was hospitalized last December, emerging with medication, a psychiatrist to oversee her treatment and a fragile sense of calm.
Leblanc found a job as an attendant in a home for the elderly, transporting and bathing residents. But one day she received a letter that contained “bad news,” the contents of which Roy said she did not wish to share.
She died the following day, on March 15. After a search, her body was discovered, dressed in her paramedic uniform. Her family also found a note to her family that read, in part: “At least, I saved some lives.”
Leblanc’s psychiatrist told her mother after he was treating her for post-traumatic stress and a professional burnout.
Douglas said the “everyday struggle” of their jobs is what often leads to psychological problems for them over the course of a career.
“You’ll get those really, really striking traumatic events like the recent events in Toronto, the (Quebec City) mosque shooting. These are things that would affect virtually anybody,” he said. “But the ones that really do it are those that cross the barrier between the personal and the professional.”