Frontline
Surviving through sharing: 'The kilted rogue runner' story Raising Awareness of Anxiety, Depression, PTSD and Suicide Prevention. By Jason Nelson
30 | Asia Pacific Security Magazine
I
am 45 years old, and I live with my family here in Perth Western Australia and this is my journey: I am a Royal Navy veteran and an ex UK and WA Police Officer, I survive Depression, Anxiety, PTSD and associated issues. I'm grateful that I have personally suffered because it has given me the insight into the power of sharing my story to help others. During my life there have been many short stories of trauma that I have been exposed to, and the way I used to deal with them was by locking them away on my sub consciousness bookshelf. Sadly these traumas include being sexually assaulted by a person in a position of trust when I was young, active service in the Royal Navy, the tragic death of a dear friend on my stag night, the devastating loss of my Grandmother, to responding to numerous horrific incidents during a distinguished policing career with Cheshire Police in the UK and here with WA Police. For me, my policing career is from where most of the trauma I have endured still affects me to this day. These include seeing numerous dead bodies, traumatic scenes, delivering death messages, horrific road traffic collisions, observing autopsies and working on covert policing teams in high risk situations. While working on a covert policing team here in Australia my supervising officers, attempted to have me removed from the team for under performing by setting me
up to fail during operations.
 This was happening within two years of moving to Australia and trying to settle my family in to our new life down under. Over a period of 6 months I became severely depressed and as a result I contemplated, planned and attempted suicide.
 On numerous occasions, in the darkest of that time, I placed the barrel of my loaded service Glock 27 pistol in my mouth with my finger on the trigger and gently squeezed. I was a mess. Thankfully with the help and support of my family I found the strength to report what was happening to me and sought the professional help I needed, which, along with distance running helped me become mentally fit again. My roller coaster of a journey continued about 3 years ago I underwent surgery for a routine hernia repair, shortly after surgery I suffered a delayed reaction to the anaesthetic and my heart went from a resting 50bpm in my sleep to over 160bpm, the crash team was called and they worked frantically to reduce my heart rate as they readied the defibrillator to shock my heart back to normal rhythm. Unfortunately for me this was the event as the trigger point to having all of the trauma short stories falling off my sub conscious bookshelf and reappearing in the fore front of my mind once more. I didn't understand the symptoms and struggled to cope with what was happening to me, the flash backs, the