Thank you.
I am Jonathan Shay. I am a psychiatrist by trade, and for 20 years I have worked with psychologically injured combat veterans in the United States Department of Veterans Affairs.
Two books have come out of this: Achilles in Vietnam and Odysseus in America. The latter draws attention to preventing psychological and moral injury in military service. This book gives the “what” and the “why” of this prevention, and some of the parochial U.S. forces' “how” in a policy sense.
United States Senators John McCain and Max Cleland, a Republican and a Democrat respectively, jointly wrote the foreword to this book endorsing the preventive mental health agenda. I'm very pleased to hear that in the Canadian Parliament, psychological injury has not become a partisan issue in the way it has in the U.S. Congress.
I have done a good bit of work with the U.S. forces over the years, and some work with the Canadian Forces and Bundeswehr, always emphasizing the sovereign importance of three things: peer cohesion, ethical and expert leadership, and excellent training in prevention and recovery from combat trauma. I have also been appointed critic of the American Psychiatric Association's diagnostic construct, PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder, as inherently stigmatizing for military forces, as well as deeply flawed in other respects.
I am very happy that the Canadian Forces have led in adopting the mode of speaking of this as psychological injury or operational stress injury. This way of speaking about it is now being followed by the United States Marine Corps. As recently as last week--although I haven't seen this on the computer myself--I heard that the Secretary of the Army went on and on about this being an injury, not a disease, disorder, malady, or illness.
I welcome your comments and questions. Since I cannot grasp what you want from me, I will wait for you to tell me.