Evolving Prisons

This is episode 6 of a special 6-part series exploring the mental toll frontline professionals carry as they do vital work to protect all of us.

Sean McCallum is a crisis intervention and trauma consultant, and a watch manager in the UK fire service where he's served for 23 years. In this episode, Sean shares his view on why some experiences are traumatic for some individuals but not others, what might cause flashbacks and rumination, and how sleep - or lack there of - can shape how we process trauma.

Sean is not a clinician. His perspective comes from a person-centred metapsychological approach.

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This is episode 5 of a special 6-part series exploring the mental toll frontline professionals carry as they do vital work to protect all of us.

Lea Vaughan was a Hazardous Area Response Team paramedic and one of only three medics to treat victims inside the arena during the Manchester Arena bombing in 2017 - the largest casualty she'd ever faced. In this episode, Lea reflects on the night of the attack and the lasting psychological impact. She speaks about the lack of support she received afterwards and the unexpected public backlash she faced, including death threats, as a visible face of the ambulance service.

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This is episode 4 of a special 6-part series exploring the mental toll frontline professionals carry as they do vital work to protect all of us.

Craig Wylde became a prison officer in 2006. Just four years later, at the age of 28, he was stabbed by a prisoner and left with life-changing injuries that forced his medical retirement. In this episode, Craig speaks about the attack and the long, painful process of coming to terms with a new reality. He speaks about the mental toll of the trauma and how, at his lowest point, he contemplated taking his own life.

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This is episode 3 of a special 6-part series exploring the mental toll frontline professionals carry as they do vital work to protect all of us.

Philip Ingram MBE joined the British Army in 1984 and served until 2010, leaving as a colonel. In this episode, he reflects on several difficult moments during his career, particularly his time during the Iraq war in Basra. He speaks about the trauma of losing a close friend, of having to read autopsy reports of soldiers who died, and witnessing distressing images of a helicopter being shot down. He shares the ways in which his mental health was impacted, to the point he carried a suicide kit around with him for years.

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This is episode 2 of a special 6-part series exploring the mental toll frontline professionals carry as they do vital work to protect all of us.

Wayne Campbell joined the police service in Northern Ireland in 2004 and spent much of his career as a detective, including overseeing the family liaison response for some of the country’s most devastating incidents - from homicides and fatal road accidents to mass casualty events. In this episode, Wayne tells us about two of the most defining and harrowing experiences of his career: being attacked by a loyalist terrorist group, and flying to America to tell a mother that her daughter had taken her own life after being targeted online by a man later convicted of child sexual abuse offences.

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