A Manawatu cop is fighting for a law change to help emergency workers experiencing repeated trauma on the job.
Matt Davis wants ACC's criteria to recognise cumulative trauma as a cause of work-related mental injury - following his own traumatic journey.
Emergency services can deal with many different traumatic situations on the job, from car crashes, raging fires, to violence and death.
"You name it, and it's just a compound every single day of really not very good stuff," Constable Davis says.
Davis has been a cop for 17 years, and the cumulative trauma has taken its toll.
"[At one point] I was feeling suicidal, I was feeling very depressed," Davis tells Newshub.
Those feelings were triggered during a routine traffic stop in 2016, which took a dangerous turn.
"The driver reversed his ute straight into my driver's door and then tried to ram me."
He was diagnosed with a mild-trauma brain injury and concussion, and took four months off work.
When he returned he had flashbacks and the repeated trauma he experienced on the job eventually came to a head while out driving one day.
"The thought went through my mind it would just be easy just to not stop at the intersection and carry on through and see what happened," Davis adds.
His GP told him it was obvious he had PTSD; he made a claim with ACC citing 'cumulative trauma' - which was initially declined pending assessment.
ACC's criteria for work-related mental injury states it must be caused by a single event, rather than a gradual process.
It then took six months before his claim was accepted and he got the help he needed.
"Through that process was when I realised how difficult it was to deal with ACC legislation," Davis claims.
Davis wants to make that process easier - while gardening one day he decided to start a petition calling for ACC to recognise cumulative trauma for emergency workers.
ACC told Newshub it's bound by the current legislation and directed questions to the Minister of ACC.
Iain Lees-Galloway declined an interview - but Davis is receiving support from the police union, which is researching cumulative trauma compared with one-off events.
"The fact that it isn't already recognised says there's some blockages so we just want to make sure that we've got the right research to clear those blockages," Police Association president Chris Cahill says.
Davis says with the help of therapy he's back at work. He was recently filmed by Newshub on patrol following the March 15 mosque attacks in Christchurch.
"Even though we're the ones helping others, sometimes we just need that bit of help ourselves," adds Davis.
Help he'll keep fighting for, for his fellow emergency service workers.
