I'm not a clinician in this field, but I can tell you from what I've read and from what clinicians have told me that PTSD can certainly result from a number of different types of events. I don't think our definition or our medical advice around people with PTSD conditions would constrain any very broad acceptance of a series of events as leading potentially to PTSD. I think you can see from the numbers we presented that the number of people who are diagnosed with the condition have increased rapidly in the department.
But I want to emphasize that under the new Veterans Charter we are now able to deal with these people and treat them as a result of a very quick examination by people on the front line in our 32 offices across the country. Area counsellors in our offices now are able to assess the need for rehabilitation and start people in the treatment program without the requirement to put people through a very complex, quasi-judicial adjudicative process.
I also think that what Louise Richard was being quoted as saying is quite true, that there is a lack of capacity across the country in the diagnosis and treatment of PTSD and other occupational stress injuries, and that's why we've tried to establish this network of clinics where there is a critical mass of expertise.
I'd like to deal specifically with Mr. Bruyea's allegation that we don't have the right kind of response in place. I don't accept that, and I don't accept it for a number of important reasons. If you look at where people have wanted to receive the treatment—and this comes back in part to Mr. Perron's point—it's unlikely that people who are suffering from PTSD or other occupational stress injuries or other illnesses related to recent deployments are going to want to be treated in a geriatric hospital that Veterans Affairs Canada might have operated after World War II. That's what these contract facilities are all about, these nursing homes where we provide contract beds.
What we've been doing with the younger veterans, and I think this is the appropriate thing, is giving them a lot more choices about where they're treated in communities, and we are able to draw on the expertise that has developed across the country where there is capacity to deal with the specific types of illnesses these people are suffering from.
I should point out that there's been about an 80% increase in the occupation of what we call community beds across the country in the last couple of years, and yet the people who are in what we call our contract beds...the use of those contract beds over time has been diminishing quite dramatically.
So I think if you look at the choices younger veterans are making, if they have to go into a nursing home kind of setting or a setting where they are getting treatment, they'll often want to get the treatment closer to where they live rather than in the departmental facilities we occupy in very limited places across the country.