Chief Mehdizadeh earns CMHA workplace award

By Lethbridge Herald on November 26, 2025.

Alejandra Pulido-Guzman
Lethbridge Herald

The Canadian Mental Health Association, Alberta South Region awarded Lethbridge Police Service Chief Shahin Mehdizadeh the 2025 Workplace Wellness Award during their Annual General Meeting on Tuesday. 

The award recognizes and celebrates people or organizations who are setting the standard for organizational wellbeing by prioritizing employee health and well-being through effective programs, policies, and initiatives.

David Gabert, engagement communication lead for CMHA south region, said they were excited to recognize Chief Mehdizadeh as somebody who’s making a difference not just in their own internal workforce, but also in the community. 

“We know that as a part of the initiatives that are being put into place at LPS that it improves the mental well-being of officers and of their families, and we know that translates to that frontline service as well,” said Gabert.

He said when they were looking for an award recipient this year, his name was at the top of their list. 

Mehdizadeh said it was “an absolute honour and pleasure” to receive the award, but when you look at improving mental health, even though it takes leadership, every employee has to actually work on it. 

“As an organization we provide all the support mechanism to our employees to make sure they are looked after, because it is extremely important specially in policing environment,” said Mehdizadeh. 

He said they deal with mental health crisis for other individuals everyday many times a day, and for them to be able to help others, they have to make sure they are in a good mental state. 

“It’s an extremely important element of our promise to our employees and I’m very proud to see how employees have responded to that. And as a result, I truly believe we are providing a much better service to our community,” said Mehdizadeh.  

He said some of the services provided to the employees include providing awareness to take the stigma of mental health issues, so employees can actually feel comfortable to come forward when they’re having challenges. 

“We have every level of support to help them get going with their life and it’s not just about work. We want our employees to be healthy not only for work, but also for their families and loved ones,” said Mehdizadeh. 

He said hiring a full time Wellness coordinator has been a key factor in looking after his employees. 

“And also one of the biggest things too is making sure people look after themselves because we do look at physical health and mental health as something that we have to work on ourselves,” said Mehdizadeh.

He said organizations can provide whatever service, but it all starts with them, and they are promoting that within the employees to look after themselves. 

“And when they need help, we are always there to provide that helping hand and support to them. We also recognize that they deal with a lot of situations that average people don’t deal with as police officers,” said Mehdizadeh.  

He said they keep track of those incidents and make sure when officers take on an investigation, they follow up with them through the Wellness coordinator.

“We don’t want to wait until something bad happens to them. We want to get ahead of that before and that’s been the biggest change that we’re doing,” said Mehdizadeh.