Veterans Affairs Committee on May 15th, 2008

[Col Carl A. Castro]

A very good question. We've taken two approaches to that. One approach is that we still employ the platoon level of battlemind psychological debriefings, so one mental health care provider can interact and support 30 soldiers at a time. In addition, we have resources for those who need individualized care. That isn't everybody. As was pointed out, many soldiers are okay; they don't need a one-on-one counselling or therapy session. But for those who do, those resources are also available.

We try to get them to support each other, one of the key findings in terms of leadership. It was also shown in our studies that subordinates of junior leaders, sergeants and corporals, who are supportive of their subordinates, report far fewer psychological problems than those who have leaders who are not supportive. That's controlling for combat experiences and demographic variables, etc. It really highlights the role that the junior leader plays.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Anders]

Okay. Thank you very much, Monsieur Perron.

Once again, thank you, sir, for starting off the meeting.

Now we're over to Mr. Stoffer, with the NDP.

[Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS]

Thank you, Mr. Chair

Colonel, thank you very much for appearing before us today and helping us in our deliberations.

Sir, what is the timeline on some of this battlemind training before and after they are deployed? Are we talking 30 days before and 30 days after, that kind of thing?

[Col Carl A. Castro]

Good question, sir.

We try to do the pre-deployment battlemind training within 30 days of soldiers deploying. There are two post-deployment battlemind training modules. One of the modules is intended to be given to soldiers within the first week of returning home, prior to them going on this 30 days of block leave. The second post-deployment training is given at the three- to six-month post-deployment point.

We find that when soldiers come home right away, they tend to minimize any mental health or psychological health issue they have. But at the three- to six-month time point it starts re-emerging, so we do the training at that point as well.

[Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS]

As you know, sir, what is now known as post-traumatic stress disorder does not necessarily show its ugly face, as we say, right away. It could happen four or five years after the incident.

[Col Carl A. Castro]

That's right.

[Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS]

Do you have any records or advice on that particular issue as well?

[Col Carl A. Castro]

That issue is being discussed.

Right now there is a plan in place to start doing periodic health assessments, and part of that would be a psychological screen for post-traumatic stress disorder.

[Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS]

How does that work?

In our country, of course, we have the reservists, and when they come back from deployment, they go back to their regular civilian jobs, just like your National Guard does. How do you keep track of those folks?

My last question for you is how are the families involved in this training as well? We have heard that post-traumatic stress disorder can actually be transferred to a spouse or to children, if the individual who comes home is having a very, very difficult time dealing with their personal demons in that regard.

[Col Carl A. Castro]

The reservists and the National Guard in the United States also have to go through this three- to six-month post-deployment health evaluation, including the mental health screen, and they are also required to go through the second battlemind training.

Where we really stumble is with those service members who actually leave the military, because we lose track of them completely. So we don't do a really good job of following our veterans who leave military service, and we're trying to figure out a way to do that in a way that's not considered an invasion of privacy.

In terms of spouses, we do have what we call spouse and couples battlemind training, as well. We have a pre-deployment module for spouses and couples, and a module for post-deployment. Again, it follows the same principles. It's based on the strengths of the spouse, the strengths of the family, and also on the things to look out for when things aren't going well, and on knowing when to get help, either for yourself or the service member. But we don't follow their children at all.

[Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Anders]

Are those all of your questions, Mr. Stoffer?

[Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS]

Yes, sir.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Anders]

Now we go to Mrs. Hinton, from the Conservative Party, for seven minutes.

[Betty Hinton, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

Good afternoon, Colonel Castro, and thank you for being here today.

I read the brief, and I find your terms used in there to be very appropriate, that “Battlemind describes the soldier's inner strength to face fear and adversity with courage.” I think it's a very positive message that you're trying to be very supportive. Listening to some of your answers to the questions my colleagues have asked, I find them to have been very informative.

In Canada, we do follow our members who leave the military service; it's part and parcel of what the Department of Veterans Affairs does.

I also found it very interesting that you said that since you began this program, you've managed to cut the mental health problems in half, but you weren't satisfied with that achievement. I'm glad to hear you're not, because the numbers should be far better than that. But that's a pretty significant achievement, when you consider how long you've had this particular program in place. I think you're doing something right, and you should be quite proud of it.

What we're doing right now as a committee is a comparison study of veterans services offered by members of the Commonwealth and the G-8. We've just gone through a very extensive health care review, part and parcel of which was the issue of post-traumatic stress. So all of us are very interested in that.

I was also reading here that you have pamphlets and video presentations to help individual soldiers prepare to return home—which is really good—and that you even address the issue of soldiers who are jumping at loud noises, because that's also part of battle fatigue, or whatever you want to call it.

I want to ask you, is the participation of soldiers in battlemind training mandatory or optional? That's the first question.

Second, I went online to the battlemind program website, where there are links to various websites providing information for families. There are even links to children's websites. So how important is it to provide support for the families?

[Col Carl A. Castro]

Well, on the first question, I think it really is important to understand that a lot of the symptoms and reactions service members have when they are in a combat environment are actually quite adaptive. Being hyper-alert or hyper-vigilant when you're in a combat environment where someone is trying to kill you is actually, I would say, advantageous. But if you're coming home and jumping on the floor or startling at doors slamming, people can think you're a bit wacko—no pun intended—but it's completely understandable and usually goes away with time. So we really do think that normalizing those symptoms and reactions with the expectation of full recovery is key.

As for the video links for children, and stuff, we think that the more information people can get the better. There is a very vocal minority, I would say, who think that if you tell soldiers and family members what post-traumatic stress disorder is, they'll fake the injuries just to get compensation. I categorically reject that notion out of hand. My experience with soldiers has been that our soldiers are patriotic and hard-working, and they're not trying to get something for free—not that there aren't people who do that. But you don't build programs trying to ferret out the few people who are trying to take advantage of them at the expense of those who need help. So that's the approach we've propagated, not only throughout the army, but also throughout all of the services. We're trying to do this.

You had one other question. Did I answer your first question?

[Betty Hinton, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

I think I made a lot of statements, rather than asking questions, but I did ask you if the participation of soldiers was mandatory or optional.

[Col Carl A. Castro]

Yes, participation is mandatory now, which makes doing any further studies and evaluations problematic, obviously. What we're trying to do is to see whether or not we can add elements to the battlemind training to even further improve its effectiveness. We're doing that now.

I should say that we're also working with the United Kingdom, the Brits, because they don't have any mandated mental health training programs, but are actually in the process of designing a study to look at whether or not the program would be successful with British troops coming back from Afghanistan and Iraq.

[Betty Hinton, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

Well, the chairman will not cut you off, sir, so you can take as long as you want to answer my questions, but he will cut me off.

I'm going to fire two quick ones at you. I heard you say in your earlier presentation that psychologists, etc., are handling 30 people at a time, which you say works really well in some cases. We haven't actually looked at doing that; we've been doing it one on one. But having 30 people at a time, if they all have the same symptoms, makes sense. It probably would be a very good way to do it.

You also mentioned that Canada was employing some of the aspects of this battlemind program after soldiers have come off the battlefield and have gone in for R and R. Could you give us a little bit of background on that, please?

[Col Carl A. Castro]

I'm sure the committee is aware of this, but I have probably been to Canada three or four times to conduct training of Canadian mental health professionals on the battlemind training system. Where it's currently being used is in the third location decompression site in Cyprus. I think Dr. Brian Garber and Dr. Mark Zamorski are the ones who are running that program and doing the evaluations of what the Canadians think of it, etc. In fact, the video that you referred to that we have for the post-deployment period has actually been translated into French for the French-speaking soldiers who are redeployed; they actually see it in French.

They're not doing a research study with it; they're just accepting our findings and have the program for use with Canadian Forces.

[Betty Hinton, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

That's really good to hear, and it may surprise you to know that as the parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Veterans Affairs, I wasn't aware they were using that particular program in Cyprus. So you've informed me very well.

Thank you very much for your time.

[Col Carl A. Castro]

You're welcome. Thank you, Ma'am.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Anders]

Thank you, Mrs. Hinton.

Now we're over to the Liberal Party of Canada and Mr. Russell for five minutes.

[Todd Russell, Liberal, Labrador, NL]

Thank you.

I want to follow up on a question from my colleague, Mr. Perron.

Is there a lot of collaboration between your particular department, or the army and the U.S. military generally, and Veterans Affairs? Is there much collaboration between the two in terms of the development and delivery of this program? Do you share results back and forth? I'd like to know how much collaboration there is between the two different departments.

[Col Carl A. Castro]

Within the Department of the Army and Department of Veterans Affairs there is a tremendous amount of collaboration. Of course I make all of our findings and reports available to everyone, including Canada. As you know, all of this has been presented and given to the technical cooperation panel, which is the five English-speaking members of NATO and Australia and New Zealand. In fact, that's how Canada learned about the battlemind training, because we were sharing these findings well before we started presenting them at scientific meetings and started writing papers on them.

Our goal is to get it out as quickly as possible to as many people as we possibly can, so there is a very close working relationship.