This Okanagan guitar builder is helping those with PTSD

For many, having a constructive pastime is important for mental health.

This can range from sport, to painting, and myriad of other interests at all ends of the spectrum.

But for Summerland craftsman Mike Whitney, it’s guitar building, and the passion is a craft he is passing on to others as well.

“[In] 2017, I built my first cigar box guitar and that was kind of a good foray into guitar building and taught me a lot about the basic principles,” Whitney told Kelowna10. “The fire was lit from there and I just kind of ran with it after that.”

Whitney went on to apprentice for a year under another luthier in his town, doing repair and restoration work, to building his first acoustic guitar, He eventually travelled to Vancouver Island for a master’s program, studying under Sigmund Johannessen, a Norwegian luthier.

At the beginning of 2020, Whitney opened his own shop in the Okanagan, Whitney Guitars, and moved to begin the ‘Guitars for Vets’ program, a veteran himself.

“I was in the military and suffer from some mental health issues and I knew out of the gate what guitar building has done for me,” Whitney explained. “How it has served as a therapy modality to help me decompress and de-stress and get out of the clutter that’s outside and immerse myself into a craft.”

His hopes the program gives veterans and first responders who suffer from PTSD and depressive disorders, an environment where they can immerse themselves into creativity.

He said the program has already been helpful to the people he’s taught as it can be easy to get lost in life, and not able to find purpose.

“I think more than anything, it serves as another stepping stone to recovery,” Whitney explained. “It’s a multi layered process you know; things rarely happen in isolation and guitar building is just another one of those therapy modalities.”