Evidence of meeting #11 for National Defence in the 39th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was soldiers.
A recording is available from Parliament.
5:15 p.m.
BGen Hilary Jaeger
If the committee is interested in specific figures, I can make those available.
5:15 p.m.
NDP
Joe Comartin NDP Windsor—Tecumseh, ON
I have just one more, following up on some of the biases we bring.
You're leaving me with the impression that the treatment modality that you've used for the mental stress illnesses is particularly a medical one. As opposed to relying more extensively on psychologists, you're relying more on psychiatrists. That's the impression I'm left with.
5:15 p.m.
BGen Hilary Jaeger
Actually, I'm glad you brought that up, because if you look at our mix of providers, in fact we have almost a two to one ratio of clinical psychologists over psychiatrists.
Both disciplines are involved in the assessment. They both participate in the assessment of the patient--in making the diagnosis--and then the treatment will depend on who is best placed. They may in fact both be involved, because there may be some medication management. There may be psychotherapy delivered by the psychologist and medications managed by the psychiatrist.
5:15 p.m.
NDP
Joe Comartin NDP Windsor—Tecumseh, ON
I have one final point on that, related to stuff coming out of the United States on both wars in Iraq, or at least wars. There seems to be an element of some cases being misdiagnosed as post-traumatic stress when in fact they do have a physical basis because of head injuries or brain injuries that aren't being diagnosed. Are we finding a similar phenomenon in Canada?
5:15 p.m.
BGen Hilary Jaeger
We certainly have our cases of traumatic brain injury, but I would advise you to.... If you take a careful look at the very recent article in The New England Journal of Medicine, what it says is not that post-traumatic stress disorder isn't really post-traumatic stress disorder, but really MTBI. What it says is that having had a concussion and having had that kind of disruption to your brain, whether you've lost consciousness or whether you just had your bell rung and saw stars--having had that distortion on top of all the other things puts you at higher risk of PTSD.
What it's really saying is to screen very carefully people who've been through these kinds of explosions for PTSD. It's not saying you've got the diagnosis wrong and it's not PTSD. A lot of people who got the press clippings version of the article missed that point.
5:20 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Rick Casson
Thank you, Joe.
Thank you both very much. You've certainly got our investigation into this off to a great start. We appreciate the frank comments and the good questioning from the committee members as well.
Just as a note to the committee, we're trying desperately to make sure we have a full slate next week. We're working on getting some more witnesses in.
Thank you all very much.
The meeting is adjourned.