KAWARTHA LAKES – Within a two-month time frame, police officer Jon Perrin found the bodies of two missing young people, dead from suicide and his life has never been the same.
“When people call police, 99 per cent of the time it’s for something that’s bad, it’s not that they’re ever calling when something good is going on, we are constantly responding to death and abuse and severe car crashes where people’s bodies are dead and bodies are horrible to look at and see,” said Perrin. “It’s all things in the real-world other people don’t ever see, so seeing all of that and then…I had been to suicides before, but I think the age of the two victims within a couple months period, really affected me and I found them both, they had been dead and missing, I looked around and I found them.”
After working in a factory for nine years, Perrin decided it was time for a change and he enrolled in college when he was 27. Following graduation, he was hired as a security officer at Sunnybrook hospital where he worked for three years while he applied to the police force. In 2012, Perrin was ecstatic as he was officially hired to work the front lines as a police officer.
“It was the best job I ever had,” he said. “I loved it when I started out.”
But in 2017, after witnessing devastation beyond imagination and responding to calls that will likely affect him for the rest of his life, Perrin began to feel the effects of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, PTSD.
Perrin started to turn to alcohol, began to self-isolate and thoughts of suicide regularly travelled through his mind.
But following the calls that had Perrin responding to two separate suicides, he denied his feelings and pushed through and continued to work the front lines for another two years.
“I was starting to have signs of PTSD but I was kind of in denial and I never really thought that PTSD could happen to me,” he said. “I started having nightmares, depression, anxiety, I started abusing alcohol, I was using it to try to escape reality and what I went through, I didn’t have any emotion and my relationship was suffering with my wife.”
Perrin noted that one of the bodies he found belonged to a teenaged girl who shared the same name as his daughter.
“Anytime I was home and my wife would yell out to my daughter, it was always a trigger and a reminder of the young girl I found,” he said.
And while Perrin discovered the bodies in 2017, he didn’t give in to his symptoms until June of 2019 when suicide almost ended his own life.
“Finally, in June 2019 I broke down on a night shift and I thought about ending my life and what kind of saved me was for some miracle I pulled out a picture of my two kids out of my wallet, it gave me a minute of clarity within all the chaos going on inside my mind and that kept me alive,” said Perrin. “After that shift, I broke down to my wife and told her I needed help, it was her that got me into my family doctor the next day and then I was wrote off of work and started to see a psychologist that diagnosed me with PTSD.”
Since that day, Perrin has been doing therapy ever since. And while he believes his condition has improved by leaps and bounds, Perrin knows he still has a long road ahead.
“If I hadn’t reached out to my wife, I guarantee that I wouldn’t be here today,” said Perrin. “I am way better than I was in 2019 when I first went off, but I still have a long way to go.”
One day, Perrin hopes to rejoin the police force in some sort of position but for now he is taking it one day at a time.
In 2019, Perrin created a Facebook post, sharing some details of his own experience and the response was exciting.
Three different individuals came forward, thanking Perrin for his bravery which inspired them to reach out for help for their own situations.
“So, I thought if just that one post is helping three people, maybe I’ll start a page here,” he said.
And that is just what he did, the Living With A Mental Health Illness Facebook page was developed in hopes of breaking down the stigma and helping others.
“I didn’t ask for help, you don’t want to come across like you’re weak, so I wanted to help people take that first step, so I found sharing my stories, it let people know they’re not alone, there is other people that feel what they’re feeling,” explained Perrin.
As more and more followers came forward, the Facebook page quickly became a podcast, Twisted Trauma, that can be found on Spotify. According to Perrin, every episode discusses his personal life from childhood until present day. They usually run for about eight to 10 minutes with new episodes airing every Monday.
“What I really enjoy is writing, so I started writing my life story and then that turned into writing songs, but I can’t sing,” laughed Perrin. “So, I turned it into poems, I’ve done a ton of poems and the podcast, I started sharing my writings.”
Often Perrin and his wife Jen, will join forces on Saturday mornings to air the Saturday Stir-Up With Jon and Jen.
Over coffee, the duo will discuss their experience, mental health and other relevant issues. Through the podcast, Perrin noted that his biggest goal is to inspire others to ask for help.
“You have to not be in denial, you have to be able to take that first step yourself and say there is something going on that’s not right and find support somewhere, through friends, family or by calling a crisis line,” he said.
And while suicide and traumatizing events are common amongst front-line workers, how each individual deals with the aftermath is always different, said Perrin.
As a crucial part of recovery and prevention, Perrin and his wife, who has a medical background, often discuss what more can be done for those on the police force.
“Police forces have had quite a few suicides in the last few years and really tried to get officers and the stigma out of it, to speak out if you’re having problems but I think they still have a long way to go in changing things to make it better, but I don’t know what the answer is,” he said. “There is more to be done to support the officers when they’re experiencing death, that they can get the support they need to survive doing that kind of a job.”
Perrin noted that in the United States, often a psychcologist is present at the station at all times and works like one of the teammates on the force. He believes this would be a beneficial addition to our local stations.
“I think this would help, someone that knows you and can tell the signs of maybe you had a crappy day and aren’t yourself,” he said. “I isolated from everybody, I’d get in my cruiser and go and do my thing on my own, then I’d come home, and I wasn’t with my family, I’d keep myself away from them, I didn’t want to burden them and that led to alcohol.”
As part of Perrin’s efforts, he will be donating one dollar for every 1000 listens on the podcast to a mental health organization.
Paul Duncan, a sales and leasing representative at Lindsay Buick GMC is sponsoring the podcast and has also agreed to match any donations made.
For Jeff Burke, a former Lindsay police officer, PTSD is also what sent his life into a downward spiral. After growing up in a loving, Christian home, Burke lived a life that was focused on his wife, children and a career that he loved.
Burke worked as a Durham Regional Police Officer from 2003 to 2005 and then transferred to Lindsay where he remained until he resigned in May 2020.
But Burke would never have guessed that his journey on the police force would eventually lead him to a mental illness and criminal charges.
“It totally puts you upside down, I grew up sheltered, in a very loving family, a Christian home, which was part of my downfall, in the end, I never realized how twisted and evil the world is.”
And while Burke never planned on being a police officer, he enjoyed it and built a reputable reputation that enabled him to enhance his career as he held various, high-ranking positions on the police force. But after years of traumatic incidents, symptoms of PTSD began to follow him, and eventually, they caught up.
In 2011, Burke thought he was completing a routine search warrant when he was greeted with a machete that nearly took his life. For the following few years, Burke insisted on pushing through many alarming situations and experiences and always returned back to work without taking the necessary time off.
“Unfortunately, policing has a pervasive attitude, suck it up, move on, there was no debriefing after that, but I went back to work, I could have taken time, I didn’t, it’s on me.”
Numerous situations followed that left Burke feeling the strain of his job and symptoms of depression and anxiety continued to lurk. He also noted that for him, it was never one particular day or event that provoked the PTSD.
“It’s like a tree in the freezing rain, it’s not the first drop or the hundredth drop that breaks the tree but eventually, there is one drop that makes the tree collapse, and in policing it’s like that,” he explained. “You go from call to call to call, they tell you, you can’t burry it but when you’re doing 10 to 15 calls a day, they don’t give you time to process it.”
But even though he was dealing with multiple symptoms, Burke was in denial and it wasn’t until his friends and family came forward that he decided to seek help.
“I didn’t see it, family and friends pointed out that I wasn’t the same,” he said.
So, in April 2015, Burke was diagnosed with PTSD and he wasn’t overly surprised.
During those dark months, Burke found himself sleeping alone in the spare bedroom, curled up in the corner under blankets, anxious and afraid. Flashbacks, panic attacks and nightmares were becoming all too familiar but after months of therapy, Burke decided to return to the force.
Initially, Burke returned to uniform on a modified schedule in October 2015, with no night shifts, eventually moving to the major crime unit in January 2016.
Shortly after he entered into his new role, Burke underwent a dental procedure that eventually resulted in an addiction to prescription narcotics.
“I had Percocet, I took them, I realized they were fantastic, I self-medicated the symptoms, I’d have energy when I took them, but I only had 15 pills, fast forward to 2017, I made a stupid decision,” said Burke. “I had access to seized prescription narcotics at the police station, I grabbed a few of these, I felt happy again, I was coaching baseball again, I was a good father again.”
Eventually, his addiction got the best of him and Burke was suspended from the police force after being caught taking additional narcotics.
“I stopped taking the drugs, I wasn’t allowed at the station and I haven’t touched them since that day,” said Burke.
In 2018 after an Ontario Provincial Police investigation, Burke was charged with theft and breach of trust on April 10 with six months of full house arrest and a curfew for the remaining six months.
Following the charges, Burke eventually turned to alcohol which sent him deeper into the downward spiral.
“Then I hit the booze, I never drank up until that point, the PTSD was awful,” he said. “I always say I wish I lost an arm, a visible injury so people know you’re hurting, you want to appear strong, you want to hide mental health because of the stigma. If I lost an arm, I probably would have got a metal instead of the stigma and everything that goes with it.”
In January 2020, Burke was charged with impaired driving, but he has now been sober for 14 months.
“That was the last time I drank, it was the best thing that could have happened,” he said. “Fast forward to now, things are good, I resigned from work in May 2020.”
And while policing is behind him, eventually, Burke hopes to fully learn how to cope with his PTSD and help others in doing the same.
“Today, I am able to function pretty well, it’s not something that goes away, you’re never healed, you learn to manage it,” he said. “I want to get into a career where I can help people, I have a heart for emergency personal, I’m a big advocate now, I want to in some way help officers like myself, hopefully, get them help they need before they find themselves in a situation like I did, untreated PTSD and addiction go hand in hand.”
To visit Perrin’s Facebook page visit:https://www.facebook.com/jonperrin.livingwithamentalhealthillness/ and to listen to Twisted Trauma, visit:https://open.spotify.com/show/3DBVOcQ84JOrGd7eDFz36r?si=vTnRNcqbT7ysiNppIG73tA.
If you are in crisis call 911 or Telehealth at 1-866-797-0000. For those who are need of help, call Connex at 1-866-531-2600 or the Canadian Mental Health Association, 1-705-745-6484 or visit www.crisisservicescanada.ca.
