People First Radio – July 10, 2025People First Radio – July 10, 2025
People First Radio
Stories from Nanaimo highlight how a mother, a high school student and a gaming-addiction specialist each respond to life-changing events. The episode focuses on trauma, community support and different paths into helping professions and recovery work.
0:00•10 Jul 2025
Resilience in Nanaimo: Burn Trauma, Youth Leadership and Gaming Addiction
Episode Overview
- Trauma recovery can involve parallel healing: caring for an injured child while also addressing a parent’s guilt, shame and PTSD.
- Specialised counselling from someone who has lived similar experiences can help families feel less isolated after medical crises.
- Simple, practical support and honest check-ins from friends and community – like doing chores or just saying "I’m here" – can make a big difference over the long haul.
- Youth-led projects such as Students for Seniors show how small acts of service can ease loneliness and build understanding between generations.
- Video game addiction often sits on top of deeper issues like mental health challenges or neurodiversity, so effective help means addressing those root causes, not just the gaming itself.
“There’s this thing called post-traumatic growth… we can actually take a tragedy and we can turn it into a hero’s journey.”
What remarkable journeys have people faced head-on against trauma and addiction? This summer edition of People First Radio brings together three very different stories, all rooted in resilience and recovery, with a steady focus on mental health and community. First up, Nanaimo counsellor Kate Walker shares how a devastating kitchen accident changed absolutely everything. Her preschool-aged son suffered severe burns and spent six weeks in hospital, with around 13 surgeries over the years and more to come.
While he "shows us how to be strong, how to be brave," Kate talks frankly about being crushed by guilt and shame, and how EMDR, couples therapy, play therapy for her kids, and practices like breath work and yoga helped her rebuild. She explains why she chose counselling, saying she saw "a gap" for burn survivors who needed someone who truly understands, and why sharing shame out loud can be freeing rather than dangerous.
Then the spotlight moves to highschooler Rocky Sloan, another Nanaimo resident whose life pivoted after a serious car crash at age 11. Airlifted to BC Children’s Hospital and told he was lucky to be alive, he was deeply moved by the kindness of medical staff and now dreams of becoming a family doctor back in Nanaimo.
Rocky talks about earning a Loran scholarship worth up to $100,000, the intense selection process, and his community project "Students for Seniors" – a volunteer group that does groceries, gardening and simple chores while also tackling loneliness among elders. Rounding out the episode, counsellor Elaine Yuskoski recounts how her son’s gaming spiralled into a 16-hour-a-day habit at university and how a long, relapse-filled detox eventually led to eight years game-free.
She unpacks video game addiction as a behavioural issue, the pull of online games, and why underlying factors like ADHD, trauma or toxic home environments matter. Anyone curious about trauma recovery, parenting through crisis, youth leadership or gaming addiction gets thoughtful, down-to-earth stories that ask: what might healing look like for you?
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