Jodie Vanderslot | Health Editor
Featured Image: The Games allow wounded, injured, or sick veterans to take part and compete in various adaptive sports such as wheelchair basketball, sitting volleyball, archery, and road cycling. | Jodie Vanderslot
The Invictus Games is an international adaptive athletic event, which includes track, jumping, shot put, and several other events for those competing in wheelchairs, with prostheses, or with a guide. The Games, founded by Prince Harry, allow wounded, injured, or sick veterans to take part and compete in various adaptive sports such as wheelchair basketball, sitting volleyball, archery, and road cycling. By creating a space for these veterans to compete, the Games may also benefit the athletes’ mental health.
Gerald Young, a professor in Psychology at Glendon Campus, has done extensive research in the area of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and psychological injury. According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), PTSD, as well as Trauma- and Stressor-Related Disorders, occurs from exposure to a traumatic or stressful event.
This exposure comes either through witnessing a trauma first-hand, learning about a trauma, or indirect exposure to aversive details. This event can be re-experienced through intrusive thoughts, nightmares, flashbacks, or brought on by a multitude of traumatic reminders.
Young says: “The Invictus Games really helps motivate them to overcome their impairments, both physical and psychological, because it gives them a goal, a way of forgetting, and a way of coping—it enables them.
“They’re wounded warriors, rather than traumatized and debilitated individuals.”
This is the third Invictus Games, which took place this year in Toronto from September 23 to 30, consisting of over 550 athletes from 17 nations. Among the athletes and crowded stands of thousands of spectators was Prince Harry himself, who attended the Games as a viewer and later handed out medals to the athletes.
York President and Vice-Chancellor, Rhonda Lenton, announced a new award in honour of the event in support of military personnel and their children—the York University Service Award. The award provides up to $20,000 over four years to support access to a postsecondary education for students who are members of the Canadian Armed Forces, active or retired, and who have a disability or impairment.
