10/10/2025
🌍 Today is World Mental Health Day 🌍
Lengthy post, but worth a read...
Having recovered from mental health issues, I thought that it would be appropriate to share some facts and figures about PTSD/C-PTSD and mental health in the ambulance service and how prevalent it is compared to the rest of the UK population:
⚠️ Ambulance staff are at 10x greater risk of PTSD than the general public. This isn't just because of traumatic incidents, but shift work, overruns and no breaks. (Crawford-Clark, 2023).
⛔️ The general public may see a traumatic event once or twice in their lifetime, where ambulance staff are exposed to a higher frequency and higher severity of trauma than the general public, increasing the risk of depression and PTSD in the emergency services. (Mildenhall, 2019).
❌️ worsening staff retention in the ambulance service is likely to have been caused by a multitude of factors including: poor leadership/management, increased demand on service, poor work/life balance, shift patterns and fatigue. It's also worth noting that it's not always the "major trauma" incidents that trigger poor mental health, but these every day stressors. (Beldon and Garside, 2022).
😔 Between 2005 and 2019 there were 75 registered deaths by su***de for paramedics. This is not a true reflection of the situation, as this doesn't include staff who are not paramedics, such as ECAs, EMTs, AAPs and ambulance control room staff. This figure is truly much, much higher. (Crawford-Clark, 2023).
🪖The prevalence of PTSD is equal to that of the military (Crawford-Clark, 2023).
Those are the facts. But with all this literature, what is actually done to help and support a population who dedicate their careers helping others, often at the expense of their own health? The answer... not a lot. You're signposted to Occupational Health, given a phone number for The Ambulance Staff Charity (TASC), or your manager occasionally buys pizza to boost morale 🤷♀️
This does NOT get to the root cause of the problem, and barely papers over the cracks of a toxic environment.
How did I recover? Pranic Healing. I was extremely skeptical that an energy healing modality would help. Cutting a very long story short (because healing/recovery is never linear),
😊 No more nightmares and full uninterrupted nights sleep
💫 No more heightened awareness in crowded places
🧘♀️ More peace, less stress and no more overwhelm.
🫶 No more triggers when there's loud, unexpected noises.
🙏 I can walk through places where I experienced some of the most traumatic events in this life and there's no longer a "fight, flight, freeze" response.
🔬 Pranic Healing has been through clinical trials at King's College Hospital, and you can find the results here: https://fg.bmj.com/content/15/Suppl_1/A24 (Flitcroft et al. 2024). This has been Peer Reviewed to show that it's not just a placebo effect. Energy is real ✨️
💥 "Energy cannot be created or destroyed; it can only be changed from one form to another." Albert Einstein.
By removing the traumatic energy from a person's system, complete recovery is possible and attainable. It's not voodoo, it's not witchcraft... it's a science.
It doesn't just work on trauma. Stress, anxiety, depression, phobias, addiction... right through to hypertension, asthma, broken bones, strokes, heart problems, skin problems... the list is endless for what Pranic Healing can help with!
If you want to know more about how this incredible complementary therapy can help, follow Institute of Pranic Healing UK & Ireland or visit their website: https://www.ukpranichealing.co.uk
📷 Ambulance Humour