Evidence of meeting #26 for Veterans Affairs in the 39th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was soldiers.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Todd Russell Liberal Labrador, NL
While this training is mandatory now for the military, what approach does Veterans Affairs take to the component of the training that they have some uptake on?
Col Carl A. Castro
Within the Department of Veterans Affairs, the veterans centres, the folks who are doing the outreach for the Department of Veterans Affairs, have adopted the battlemind training framework as a way of de-stigmatizing mental health and a way to get service members who need help to come in and sort of feel comfortable that the Department of Veterans Affairs knows how to talk to service members about mental health issues.
One of the really big obstacles is that service members don't want to talk to somebody who can't relate to their military experience. One of the things that mental health professionals find useful themselves about battlemind training is that it talks about mental health in a way that service members, soldiers, can understand.
Liberal
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Rob Anders
Thank you, Mr. Russell.
There are still a couple of minutes left on your time. I have two questions of my own I'd like to ask, if you are willing.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Rob Anders
You're very kind, Mr. Russell.
Let's talk about these videos. I realize that some of the committee members have actually had a chance to see them, to Google them, or maybe they're on YouTube or something. I'm not sure. I would be very intrigued to actually see some of this stuff. I am wondering if it can be purchased. Can we purchase them for committee members, that type of thing?
Col Carl A. Castro
Sir, you can have them for free. You can download them for free. There is no cost. They are for everyone.
Conservative
Col Carl A. Castro
Yes. It's on a new website also. The original website was www.battlemind.org, and if you type that in it will take you to our new website, which is www.battlemind.army.mil. Either one of those will take you right to it, and you can download all of the stuff. It's free of charge. It's intended for everybody to use.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Rob Anders
I'm just making sure I have that correct. Was it www.battlemind.org, and then it became www.battlemind.army.mil?
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Rob Anders
That is much appreciated. I will check that out.
Now we're over to the Bloc Québécois.
Ms. Demers, you have five minutes.
Bloc
Nicole Demers Bloc Laval, QC
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Colonel Castro, thank you very much for being with us today. I should tell you at the outset that I am the daughter of a soldier who was in the front lines for six years. When my father came back, he had to be hospitalized for several months because people thought that he had gone mad. He died fighting for his rights. So I am very pleased to see that more effort is devoted to our soldiers coming back from active duty now than was the case in the 1950s.
You said that, instead of decompression, Canadian soldiers in Cyprus could benefit from the same training as is provided to Americans. You provide it before, during and after combat. Our soldiers, on the other hand, just receive training post-combat.
Do you think that the two other parts of the training are critical? I feel that the third part is not enough. A good number of young men and women coming back from Afghanistan suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder even though they have been through Cyprus.
Could they be helped by getting the other two parts of the training? Would it be easy to adapt the training so that we could provide it for our soldiers here?
Col Carl A. Castro
That's a very good question. Thank you, Ma'am.
Obviously, we think that we need to take a systems approach, so we now have data showing that the pre-deployment training is effective when assessed during the deployment. We do not have good outcome data from the battlemind psychological debriefings that occur during deployment, but we have anecdotal evidence that soldiers and care providers like them, and we certainly know that the post-deployment training is effective.
So we think that we need to take a systematic approach, where we get them at every phase, because, as I pointed out, just doing one by itself doesn't reduce the rates to zero. So our goal is to get the rates as low as we can. We will probably never get to zero, but it certainly is our goal still to make them as low as possible.
I think it can be transported to Canadian Forces, because the post-deployment has been transcribed and translated to, if you will, Canadian English as opposed to American English.
Bloc
Nicole Demers Bloc Laval, QC
Colonel, do you also feel that the last part could be used to help our older soldiers, those who came back from combat several years ago, those whom we often see on Remembrance Day, still in a great deal of distress?
They were never told that they suffered from post-traumatic stress. They always believed that they are as they are because they had been broken, that they were not tough enough, not masculine enough, not men. They are ashamed to show the distress that still affects them.
Do you believe that the third part of the program could help them to combat those old stereotypes?
Col Carl A. Castro
Ma'am, that's a very good question. We just have no idea; we have no data looking at its effectiveness two or three years, or ten or twenty years, or decades later in terms of service members still suffering from mental health issues.
My sense is that you would probably need to get them into a one-on-one discussion with a counsellor and work through the stigmatization and self-blame and the view that it's a character flaw, a weakness that you have. That's clearly not the case, but they're probably going to need more support than a simple one-hour discussion of their perceptions and their experiences.
Conservative
Bloc
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Rob Anders
He is up, and there are opportunities to follow.
Now we go to the Conservative Party, and Mr. Shipley, for five minutes.
Conservative
Bev Shipley Conservative Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Colonel, for being with us. It's a pretty interesting and intriguing program that you've developed.
Is it the same program that's used for the air force and the navy? Are all components of it the same?
