SOME INFORMATION ABOUT DEPTHERAPY
We have been asked by several people to give some more explanation of what the Deptherapy Foundation is all about.
Put most simply, the Deptherapy Foundation exists to service the development of the Deptherapy programme.
At present the programme is delivered in twice-yearly modules in the world’s largest diving centre, Key Largo in Florida. On April 29, 2009, three British soldiers including former Royal Marine Matt Croucher, GC, who famously won his medal for leaping on a grenade to save his colleagues, will fly to Key Largo to join a dozen ex-service personnel from the US Marines and especially the 101st Airborne Division, the famous Screaming Eagles. This is the first time troops from both the USA and UK have joined the programme, which this time is being called the Deptherapy Challenge.
Matt Croucher still suffers from the physical after-effects of his heroic exploits. But he is determined to to become the first Briton to be trained in the programme in order that he can become a Deptherapy instructor.
The other two Britons are Steve Hands, who was badly wounded in the spine during his service, and Dominic Lovett, paralysed from the neck down in a training accident. Lovett’s case is unique – he is attempting to become the first tetraplegic veteran to undertake a diving course and will do so with the aid of a state-of-the-art face mask designed by the Oceanic company working with Fraser Bathgate. Lovett will be accompanied at all times by a carer – the Foundation’s watchword is safety, and even though expert medical advice is being provided by the American hosts, it was felt that a carer would be necessary for Lovett.
All of them will undergo ten days of an unusual but highly effective form of intensive therapy – a scuba diving programme called Deptherapy, pioneered by Fraser Bathgate from Edinburgh who himself has been paralysed from the waist down since the age of 23.
Tried and tested, and already producing impressive results, Deptherapy has already changed lives immeasurably for the better. The co-founders of the Deptherapy Foundation aim to extend its benefits to other ex-service personnel in the first instance.
The next module involving British veterans is set for October at Key Largo and the medium-term aim is to take a British-American expedition to the Cayman Islands next year. The long-term aim of the Deptherapy Foundation is to finance and organise regular therapeutic trips to warm water scuba-diving venues for former servicemen and servicewomen who will benefit from the unique and successful qualities of the Deptherapy Programme.
FRASER BATHGATE – short biography:
As the instigator of the Deptherapy programme, Fraser Bathgate is the key person in this organisation.
At the age of 23, Bathgate was living in London and was set to join a climbing expedition to the Himalayas. Shortly before his departure, Bathgate fell 25ft from a climbing wall, landing on his heels on the concrete, breaking bones in his legs and feet and compressing his spine. Paralysed from the waist down and confined to a wheelchair, Bathgate moved back to his home town of Edinburgh.
At much the lowest point of his life, a friend suggested he try scuba-diving. From the start, Bathgate proved to be a natural diver. He soon devised his own swimming technique that combined hip-rotation with the use of his arms for underwater propulsion. “In the water, I do not feel disabled,” he says.
With his determination renewed, and with a commitment that he has retained ever since, Bathgate decided to extend his hobby. His next step was to become a qualified scuba diver and coach, which he did with the Professional Association of Diving Instructors (PADI) in Malta. In 1994, Bathgate became the world's first paraplegic PADI Instructor, and joined the International Association of Handicapped Divers (IAHD) which had been formed the previous year to provide instructors, dive buddies and training programmes for people with serious physical disabilities. He is nowVice-President and Director of Training of IAHD.
After qualifying as an Instructor Trainer with another leading training agency, the National Association of Underwater Instructors, Bathgate began teaching not only disabled divers but future instructors.
In the course of supervising divers and their training, Bathgate has travelled to North and Central America, the Middle and Far East, Australia and various Indian Ocean, Caribbean and Mediterranean locations. As International Training Director for a well-known dive centre in Florida he runs a popular week of free ‘try-dive’ courses for disabled people every year. Bathgate also began a series of motivational presentations at spinal rehabilitation units - the No Barriers tours.
Ford Motor Company then appointed Bathgate a Ford Mobility Ambassador. Mobility s Ford's free phone information service on driving with a disability.
Today, Fraser Bathgate is one of the world's leading consultants on access for disabled people to major outdoor events. In 2001 he became Disabled Liaison Officer for Rock Steady Security, later taken over by G4S. He surveys and reports on access issues at major sporting events such as football and rugby union internationals and major concerts.
In his career he has helped many disabled people enjoy Live 8, T in the Park, and individual open-air concerts by Queen, REM, U2, Oasis, Elton John and Coldplay. He was also disability consultant for the Make Poverty History event in Edinburgh.
Bathgate also works with the Children's Hospice Association Scotland (CHAS), particularly Rachel House in Kinross, to make sure that terminally ill children are able to attend outdoor events.
Despite his other responsibilities, today Bathgate is more active in scuba-diving than ever. He has continued to develop his own skills - he is, for example, an Advanced Diver Medical Technician and qualified to operate a hyperbaric chamber, for treatment of divers with decompression illness.
His technical achievements have transformed diving for the disabled, including the development of a special undersuit, webbed gloves, weight harnesses and flexible fins. He has been closely involved in the design of a chin-operated underwater scooter with a long-life battery. He has even advised space agency NASA in the USA on its weighting systems.
In 2002, Bathgate was the subject of a BBC documentary, one of eight Lives Less Ordinary. The following year he was a finalist in the ‘Great Scot - Unsung Hero’ Awards
DEPTHERAPY – THE PROGRAMME
Over the years, Bathgate had realised that scuba diving had vast potential to be used as a form of therapy for disabled people, and particularly for those recovering from crippling injuries, perhaps even the colossal damage sustained by soldiers in modern conflict.
In 2007, he had the chance to put his theories to the test. Bathgate was invited to Fort Campbell, the giant US Army base on the Kentucky/Tennessee border, home to the 101st Airborne Division, the famous Screaming Eagles. From day one, Bathgate’s programme of diving and underwater exercise made an almost miraculous impact on the rehab work being undertaken by men who had suffered everything from traumatic brain injuries to paralysis. The whole experience was entirely positive for Bathgate and the divers. The Eagle Divers group was formed by participants and one of its specific aims is to push the case for more American veterans to be allowed access to scuba diving.
In late 2007, Fraser accompanied six veterans who had suffered appalling injuries, such as spinal fractures, on an epic trip from Fort Campbell to Florida. At Key Largo, the world’s largest diving centre, all the men had the chance to dive in the sea for the very first time – until then, all their training sessions had been pool-based. The results were astonishing, much more so than pool-based work. The programme that became Deptherapy was born.
In April, 2008, 12 more disabled American veterans of the conflicts in the Middle East were given the chance to take their physical rehabilitation a step further than they ever thought possible. Fraser returned to Fort Campbell and Key Largo and if anything, this second session was even more successful.
US service personnel who benefited from Deptherapy include retired Army Staff Sergeant BRIAN PRICE, who suffered spinal cord severance in a roadside bombing in Iraq. He is wheelchair-bound and is paralysed from the lumbar region down. (Photographer James Nachtwey captured images of Sgt Price lying on a gurney, with the name of the soldier's daughter, Ashlynn Jaide, tattooed in script over his heart)
Interviewed by journalists in Florida, Sgt Price said: "When I started diving I did a complete 360 in my attitude with my injury, because I was pretty depressed. And the more I dive, the happier I get."
His trips to America convinced Bathgate that he should be taking disabled British veterans onto his therapy courses. There are limited sub aqua programmes to help British wounded, but quite obviously there is no pool as deep nor as extensive as the open sea, and when dealing with people with disabilities, the water needs to be warm at the surface where much of the training takes place, hence the need for intensive diving in the warm waters off Key Largo. It is only in such waters that Deptherapy works to its best.
THE FOUNDATION
The Deptherapy Foundation wants to move quickly to being a fully-fledged charity. At the moment we are awaiting confirmation from the Office of the Scottish Charity Register that the Foundation has official status as a non-for-profit charitable organisation. We expect that confirmation any day now.
The Programme really only works in deep warm water, i.e. the tropical seas, and though various groups and firms such as Help For Heroes, Virgin Atlantic, Breitling and Oceanic have already given help, it is necessary to raise considerable funds to develop the Programme and expand it to enable British veterans in the first instance to be put through this life-changing experience.
In brief, the Foundation needs to raise money to fund modules in Key Largo and elsewhere, and to train instructors to work with the participants.
In that respect, we anticipate that Matt Croucher and at least two or three Americans will become sufficiently proficient that they can shortly be classed as Deptherapy coaches. The Foundation will then establish a further training programme to ensure that Deptherapy instructors can themselves pass on the training so that other people can organise modules.
In the long run, it is the intention of the founders to broaden the score of Deptherapy to all disabled people who might benefit from the programme. We know it already works for the ‘guinea pigs’ in the forces, and with proper support, we are sure that it can be used for thousands of disabled people in civilian life.
At the moment, however, the Deptherapy Foundation is concentrating on military personnel invalided out of service, each of whom gets their own tailored personal programme depending on their disability.
As Fraser Bathgate says: “To see the soldiers help each other take to the water is to see the great human qualities at work – courage in the face of adversity, and the brotherhood of man at its finest.”
To close, here is a quote from Sharon Kegeles, one of the American volunteers who joined Fraser on the last module:
“You know that I often speak about the power that Scuba has to change lives. You may not fully realize what you have just been a part of...but Fraser and I know. We were topside when each and every soldier came out of the water. We saw their faces; we heard their comments, we felt their emotions. Fraser and I were overwhelmed. “
about people showing him.
