When we talk about operational stress more than about post-traumatic stress, we are moving forward on the issue. There is no doubt post-traumatic stress exists—it is a clinical diagnosis. Operational stress is a very interesting concept. In my view, it would be difficult for any member of the force who experiences operations and situations in Afghanistan—I hear the stories they bring back—not to be traumatized. However, operational stress is normal. Stress is presented as a combat weapon. That means it's part of the game.
I have not practised with the Forces for very long, but on the basis of what I hear some long-serving members of the Forces and corporals say, they experienced extremely stressful situations but had no right to respond. They had no right to be stressed. If they exhibited stress, they were excluded and set aside. They did not even have the right to talk about it.
Now, they are told that they should not put their heads in the sand, that they will experience stress, that they will be afraid, that the enemy's goal is to make them feel afraid, and that they will experience stress. When we explain ways they can use to respond to stress, we give them the right to have a reaction to stress.
In the past, two things happened in the Canadian Forces. Members of the Forces experienced extremely stressful events, and—what I would call the second level of trauma—had no right to respond and were perceived as cowardly if they did speak out. Well, I can tell you that, with this kind of message, a soldier will not speak out and will become withdrawn. That's why today, we still see soldiers who served in the former Yugoslavia, and 10, 12 or 13 years after the facts, after losing two families, two houses and so on, come to see us for the very first time because they are completely destroyed. Those soldiers were told that if they talked about it they were weaklings. They were not supposed to talk about it. The whole thing festered inside them, became part of their personality. They became adapted to their trauma. In their heart of hearts, they end up believing that it is normal for veterans to live that way. It's dreadful.
Now, we tell them that those feelings are normal, that they are part of the mission, that they will feel stress. Even as we teach them to handle their C-7, we tell them that they also have to learn to handle and manage stress. We give them preventive tools and tell them that professional help is available if those tools don't work. That's when we move out of the pathology. We are trainers, who don't show them how to shoot—we show them how to breathe. It seems a bit strange when you first hear it, but that is what we talk about.
We say that operational stress is normal, that they will experience it, and that there are professionals there to help. As a result, military personnel come to us much more quickly, and we are seeing that. We are starting to see people who are coming back from Afghanistan. I can tell you that this is very different from what we saw with soldiers stationed in Yugoslavia. They have been living with their trauma for 10, 12 or 13 years, and it has become entrenched. Now we see much less avoidance, with anxiogenec situations well targeted. We can work much more easily with that. We can identify the trauma military personnel experienced in a certain vehicle, and establish a gradual scale of exposure—Pascale Brillon might have talked about this—so that we can gradually desensitize the member to the situation that first engendered the anxiety. With this approach, therapy takes much less time and has a much higher success rate. So we should encourage members to ask for help by normalizing stress reactions. That is the angle we need to take, and that is angle we do take.