I would say a couple of things in response. Colonel Bernier can expand subsequently. First, I would agree with you that there is not necessarily any set timeframe. We have had people who have been fully treated and have returned to work. I know personally of many people who have been identified with any number of mental health issues and conditions who have successfully gone through a combination of clinical and non-clinical mental health treatment and returned fully fit for employment and deployment. They have indeed gone back to the operational theatre and have successfully completed the mission.
I said publicly during the Caring for our Own symposium that I now realize, given all the research we've done and our ability to categorize, that personally, when I came back from the Persian Gulf in 2002, I slipped from a green state of mental health to a yellow state and then rebounded back some months later. That was in hindsight. Having read up on it, I think it was a totally normal reaction that happens to many people.
I would say that we're looking to treat as many people as possible to bring them back to a normal state, acknowledging that there are some people, especially when you're talking about severe mental health conditions, severe post-traumatic stress disorders, and severe operational stress injuries, who will never be able to recover or be treated successfully. That's a fact. But we have had great success in treating people and returning them to service.
When I was in Afghanistan in 2010, I spoke with a mental health nurse. She had a wonderful mandate to go out into the field, on an intervention piece, and reinforce some of the training and awareness for people in the field who had incidences of anxiety. She would be there to discuss it with them, to reinforce some of the training, and, on an intervention basis, to focus them and help them deal with their anxiety to enable them to return to full service without having to be patriated out of the operational theatre. Those are some of the advancements I think we are really moving ahead with.