Exactly. The way I look at PTSD—and I do have PTSD. I was diagnosed in 2012. I can honestly say that PTSD is kind of an umbrella, because my signs and symptoms were more anxiety and depression. There are prevalence rates with anxiety and depression, so if you don't look after those, the end result is PTSD.
There are also social phobia. Those are some of the more common mental illnesses that you will see in first responders.
What is the cost of doing nothing? There's absenteeism. We talked about presenteeism. There are the disability claims—that $51 billion—your injuries, the grievances, the turnover in your staff, and the legal implications based on the fact that it's no longer only physical injuries that we have to look after, but there are also the emotional injuries that can be affected within your workplace.
So what is the solution? The road to mental readiness was developed by the Department of National Defence in 2008 and 2009. Basically, this stems from Afghanistan where they noticed a higher increase in mental illness, so the chief of personnel and the surgeon general decided to pull their resources together. This was unique, because they brought in not only the specialists, the subject matter experts, but also the soldiers. The soldiers could speak to soldiers, just as police can speak to police. There's a peer piece in this program, which is vital to the presentation. A psychologist can get up and name a whole bunch of stuff on symptoms and signs, but if a peer who has lived experience and who is obviously not in crisis is able to talk about it in a way that resonates with their audience, it's much more profound and it has a huge impact on the group that they're presenting to.
What are the objectives? These are the objectives of the road to mental readiness. One of the modules looks at stigma of mental illness. What is stigma? What is prejudice? The program promotes good mental health. It will reconceptualize how participants think and talk. It helps participants identify poor mental health not only in themselves but in others, and it teaches coping skills that we'll go through later on in the presentation. It creates a more supportive environment for all.
The incident that I use is the Moncton shootings, in which we created that supportive environment for those who wanted to come. It wasn't mandatory. It wasn't necessary, but they knew it was there and that was half the battle, knowing that there was support out there for them.
In the past, we've looked at mental health and mental illness, and we've looked at them as being more black and white: either you're fit for duty or you're off sick. In this case, it's green or red. When you're healthy, you're functioning normally; you're able to bounce back and there's recovery from mental illness. You are in the green. Then the other end of the spectrum is the red, being ill, that diagnosable mental illness. The question I ask you is if you have a mental illness, can you go back to the green? Can you bounce back with a mental illness and be healthy and function well?