Society depends on alcohol.
It's something that we have to deal with regularly.
All age groups do it. We often go to, you know, someone's house
and a seven-year-old's fallen over in the bath
who was quite intoxicated and quite aggressive.
So it doesn't really... It bridges all age groups.
But definitely alcohol is a huge drain.
It is tough. I mean, when you arrive on the scene,
the people there generally aren't thinking too clearly,
or they're... there's a lot of adrenaline at the scene,
especially if it's an assault.
I remember one case I went to was a young child.
It was a SIDS case.
Didn't even actually touch the patient.
But we were on the scene for 1.5 hours just dealing with the family.
I found that...
It sort of keeps coming up in my mind about pressures of the job.
I think people do sacrifice a lot in their personal life to do this job.
And that does have impact, obviously, on just your mental health.
The first few years of your job you just pass them off.
"I just missed a birthday, doesn't matter, I'm working or..."
Through time, you're missing those events
that keep people in your life.
And, um...
I'd say things were starting to affect me
long before I actually noticed that things were starting to affect me.
We all have bad jobs, streets we'll drive past
and in your mind you can see somebody at the end of the street
who's hung themself.
My worldview was starting to change.
Getting up early in the morning to go in...
To go out to do jobs, at work, was getting a lot harder.
And I was sort of jokingly threatening to quit.
Every job we got after midnight, I'd sort of threaten to quit.
"One more, and that's it, I'm going home!"
But I first noticed when I realised that I had a number of suicide plans
for when I got old.
Something that I've often talked to other paramedics about.
I brought that up with a friend
not long ago and they were horrified that it had even,
that it had even come into my mind.
People say they want to hear your stories but they don't really.
I know, if I told them, that it'd just make the whole room quiet.
I think Helen would have described herself as
a square peg in a round hole.
Being a paramedic,
I think gave her lots of opportunities to use
the good things about her personality.
There were a few accidents that she went to that she found very disturbing.
You know, things like picking up body parts off the road,
scraping people back together.
The things that really troubled Helen
with her work environment, towards the end, certainly,
were that she could never get home on time.
They were...
basically told to go to jobs, even if they hadn't had a break.
Or pressured into volunteering.
She applied to the Ambulance Service
so that she could work part-time.
And they said, "Well okay, you can work part-time
"but only until your youngest child is of school age."
And Ambulance Victoria said to her
"Well, your partner could work part-time."
And I don't know any other organisation
that would ask you to make your partner change her work hours
just so that you could work what they wanted you to work.
I'd been on the phone with a friend,
and I got off the phone, I was dressed, ready for work,
I had my lunch packed,
it was time to leave, and I couldn't stop crying well enough
to get in the car and drive to work.
And not just crying but, like,
good quality sort of sobbing, crying, hysterical kind of thing.
And I thought well, I probably shouldn't go in.
I should probably go back inside and call somebody.
I've had friends commit suicide.
People which you didn't know were gonna do it.
Well, just last year I lost two people I know.
I think over the last six, seven years...
I think it's about eight to ten, something like that.
And you see these guys...
They're paramedics cos they want to help people.
That's why they do the job.
And... they push themselves too far.
The kids went to bed.
We had an argument about something.
And she... got up, said goodnight to the kids and slammed the door.
And that was it.
And didn't come home.
I just figured she'd gone somewhere to cool off or sleep.
Then I woke up the next mooring and she wasn't there.
And in some ways it was a relief, because she was so...
It was like a cloud in the house because she was so heavy and...
sad and...
down.
And um...
I was making breakfast and the police came.
With her group manager.
And she'd been found at one of the ambulance branches.
I found out some of the details from the police on the day.
They said she'd used some drugs from the ambulance branch.
To take her life.
Some of the details were in the press.
And again, I wish I'd known that before it happened.
My friends were getting frantic phone calls
telling me not to listen to the radio,
You got 10 suicides in 5 years. In a very small workforce, really.
What do we do? How do we go about it?
MCGHIE: I think we need to understand it better.
And we need to hear from paramedics and ambulance employees
across the state
about what their concerns are and what they think could be done.
I'd like the ambulance service to get taken apart.
As in just taken apart and put back together in a healthier way.
I think if teachers took their lives at the same rate
or if politicians took their lives at this rate
there would be a much bigger response.
Being tired, working at all hours of the night,
having to deal with traumatic situations when you are so tired,
just makes you more vulnerable.
I keep doing the job because when I'm at the hospital bed
and Grandma's there and she puts her hand out
and shakes your hand and says "Thank you very much, I don't know what we'd do without you."
You get that a couple of times a week
and you realise you're in the right job.