Veterans Affairs committee  That was the experience of most of the people I interviewed. As I said, only two of them were diagnosed prior to leaving the military. The majority of them were struggling to get that diagnosis recognized so they could get the support they were entitled to. In one case they had b

Veterans Affairs committee  No. The only concern I would have is any identification, that you're going to identify a child with a trauma, that you're going to isolate them to become identified as the child of a parent with a mental health issue. A couple of years ago, there was a little girl in Borden—I do

Veterans Affairs committee  I think the inter-agency and intermingling approach is the way of the future. It's the way we can look at somebody holistically and help them decide what they need, first of all, and then have access to that support without being so specialized that we're waiting two years to see

Veterans Affairs committee  I had a long-standing practice of using energy medicine techniques. I had a client who had trauma and had suffered post-traumatic stress. I saw her struggle with her family in trying to find her new normal. She was a physician who was unable to work for a number of years. She wou

Veterans Affairs committee  In Nova Scotia there's a system called Schools Plus. It came out of something called the Nunn Commission, and it is using an interdisciplinary approach in three jurisdictions in Nova Scotia: Halifax, Bridgewater, and I'm not sure what the other one is. We come together around the

Veterans Affairs committee  I had the opportunity to talk to the child of one of the women I interviewed. Coincidentally, I met her completely outside my academic career. She disclosed that her mother had been interviewed by me. I didn't know her but she knew me. We had a discussion. She didn't understand w

Veterans Affairs committee  Again, Charles Figley, in Burnout in Families, said the most important thing in the family where trauma is an issue is that the primary caregiver—whether that's the intimate partner, the mother or the father—is able to maintain self-care and strong personal boundaries. I can te

Veterans Affairs committee  In theory, there are resources in all communities for support. In reality, that's not the case. I can't speak to any other province, but in Nova Scotia for sure there are areas that are referred to as black holes of service. There is just nothing available. It is underfunded, und

Veterans Affairs committee  You might get a referral and you might be lucky enough to see somebody. In Nova Scotia it will typically take you two years to see a psychiatrist. That's outside of the military. A crisis might get you in a little sooner, but ongoing care is very difficult to manage. It seems to

Veterans Affairs committee  There certainly is a parallel, again, to families who have a child born with a special need. There is again the ambiguous loss, because the dreams you had for that child--and in my experience with my daughter with her injury--and the reality are very different. It's not that you

Veterans Affairs committee  Then you could determine whether that needed to be extended or whether the debriefing was enough. But again, some of the people I read in my literature review said that even witnessing 9/11 on the television changed everybody, because trauma changes who we are. It changes whether

Veterans Affairs committee  There is that, and also it cannot be tied to the veteran seeking support. If she had wanted to seek out support and he hadn't, she wouldn't have been allowed. I asked if other women in the study could take part. They said the husband had to have been diagnosed, had to have been s

Veterans Affairs committee  My thesis is available at Theses Canada. I have a copy I could leave, if you'd like, but it is published on the Theses Canada website. As I said, it was part of my master's degree, and it's a published document.

Veterans Affairs committee  In one of the families that did seek support, he was diagnosed before he was discharged from the military. He was on the submarine that caught on fire, so he was part of that. They figured part of the reason his diagnosis happened so quickly was because he took part in a very pub

Veterans Affairs committee  Thank you. One of the things the research indicates about children is that in military families children are stressed more so than in any other kind of family. That's because of the postings and the deployments. They deal with the parent coming and going at a rate different from