Thank you, ma'am, very much. It's good to see you again. The last time, we were in Afghanistan together.
There is a natural propensity amongst all of us as human beings to think that someone presenting with mental illness has a problem; therefore, we have a different perception of individuals. That's true across Canada, I believe, because in Canadian society we haven't demystified, de-stigmatized, mental health as being not an illness that cannot be reckoned with, but instead, as with physical health in the Canadian Forces, something that we have programs for to get us physically well and mentally well.
Therefore, when I say stigma, it's the stigma about being side by side with your battle buddy in Afghanistan and coming back, and your battle buddy is not having problems but you're having problems, and perhaps you're too proud to be able to admit it and come forward. And as I mentioned earlier, at times the preponderance of thinking is “I don't have a problem, and if I do, I can cope with it myself”. Getting people to feel comfortable that if you're not feeling well when you get up in the morning, you're feeling depressed, you should walk into the clinic, you should walk into your chain of command and say you're just not feeling well. You should call one of your peers. Getting that to be an automatic reaction, as opposed to “I'll see how I feel tomorrow” and then “I'll see how I feel the next day”, is what I mean by de-stigmatizing.
The other issue ma'am, is the career issue. There is a very strong perception, as you've been told, that if I present for mental illness, indeed if I present for a physical problem, there is a potential that I will be released from the Canadian Forces under the universality of service, which we spoke of earlier. Part of de-stigmatizing is our education and awareness about all our programs and our success rate at returning our members back to work, but also, in those cases where you breach universality of service, about the tremendous programs that we have for starting a second career, to set you off on the right foot, to provide you the education and retraining, and also provide you the benefits and support so that you can have a healthy and vibrant second career.