FAQ

PSP comprise a wide range of occupations – or volunteer activities – including, but not limited to:  

• Border Services Officers 
• Correctional Workers 
• Firefighters 
• Indigenous Emergency Managers
• Operational and Intelligence Personnel 
• Paramedics 
• Police  
• Public Safety Communications Officials 
• Search and Rescue Personnel 

The definition of PSP in fact continues to evolve. While these roles involve vastly different duties, we find similarities in the working lives and impacts on family throughout the PSP workforce.  

PSPNET Families is an online wellbeing hub designed to support the specific yet diverse challenges faced by loved ones of public safety personnel (PSP). Information here applies to all careers within this sector, from the frontline to the office. 

This hub reflects the many different sectors of PSP, the unique dimensions of PSP work (logistics, risks, and identities), the particular aspects of life experienced by PSP families, and the life- and career-cycles of public safety work. 

Though anyone can benefit from our resources, this hub is designed to meet the demonstrated needs of loved ones of PSP who are at any and all career stages. It also benefits organizations that support PSP families, serving as an evidence-based resource to which they can refer families. 

If your loved one is connected to a job with mental and/or physical risks, our wellbeing hub is designed for you. “Family” in our case is an inclusive term for parents, spouses, significant others, close friends, adult siblings and adult children who are in relation to a working member of Canada’s public safety sector.  

Ultimately, our resources can be useful to anyone to whose life is intertwined with a PSP in any way.  

We offer a range of resources that cover topics and skill building exercises specific to PSP family life, including trauma exposure, family responsibilities, sleep, shiftwork, childcare and more. One course resource is our Spouse or Significant Other Wellbeing Course. Visit our homepage to find out more.

The Spouse or Significant Other Wellbeing Course is an internet-delivered Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (iCBT) resource that is a proven treatment for anxiety, depression, and posttraumatic stress disorder.  

This self-guided course provides education and guidance on simple techniques you can take to help manage mental health concerns both daily and over the long term.  

These include: 

• Low mood 
• Depression 
• Worry 
• Anxiety 
• Posttraumatic stress 

While everyone’s experience is different, this course uses a proven method for treating anxiety, depression, and posttraumatic stress disorder called internet-delivered cognitive behaviour therapy (ICBT).  

Thousands of people have benefitted from ICBT, including many PSP and their family members, and our team continuously adapts our materials thanks to feedback from those who take this course. 

No, it does not. This is a self-guided ICBT program. 

Absolutely, there is no requirement that you complete the course. It is here solely as an educational tool for you.  

Yes and in fact we encourage it! At the bottom of each page, you’ll find the opportunity to share whether you found the information useful and why. In the future there will be a feedback button through which you can offer more extensive comments. 

Creating an account is not required to access the resources on our site. However, if you would like to sign-up for the Spouse or Significant Other Wellbeing Course, it will be necessary to make an account.  

Your participation in the course and the responses you provide are entirely confidential. Only in rare cases will we need to break confidentiality. See Spouse or Significant Other Wellbeing Course confidentiality page. 

This resource hub was created by a team of researchers and developers from across Canada that is dedicated to devising, implementing, evaluating, and optimizing accessible resources for those whose lives are intertwined with public safety work in Canada. Visit Our Team.