You've managed to insert 15 questions in one. I congratulate you, that is clever.
First of all, what I had recommended in 1998, and this was done, was that the individual seek therapy voluntarily. Without therapy, those who are affected by operational stress will not be able to recover. That is the first principle. If your arm has been ripped apart and you don't go and see a doctor, you will die. It's the same thing with this kind of stress.
So I tried to convince the therapists not to wait in their offices for the people to come to them, but to go to them and try to promote their services. First, the role of the therapists is not explained sufficiently, people don't know what they can do and how they are integrated into the organization, particularly the civilian therapists who are assigned to the Department of Veterans Affairs or even to National Defence, without any experience in the armed forces. They would have to be taken to the field and given some experience so that they get to know the culture.
So, the first step is for the therapists to promote their services.
Woody Allen said it was “in” to have a psychiatrist. Remember his movies? And so it is: it's in to have a psychiatrist. I have been 13 years under therapy, psychiatrists and psychologists, and with medication.
The other aspect is how to bring these people around and not let them fall into a state of depression that can lead to suicide.
Suicide can happen in two minutes, any time. An odour, a noise, anything can trigger this catastrophe. In my case, it took four years before I suddenly became completely dysfunctional. I was dismissed from the Canadian armed forces because of this injury. Following that I became suicidal because there was no system aside from therapy and so on. There was no peer follow-up.
The peer support structure for the individuals and the families has to be the most innovative, cost-effective, and progressive—all the superlatives you can find—of the tools we have in prevention. A couple of years ago, the OSISS gang, the peer support gang, said they were preventing a suicide a day; these are just members.
What I have found disappointing, however, until now, was that the 400 involved in operational stress--who do a lot of volunteer work, who spend a lot of time in Tim Hortons with people, listening and so on, very low-budget—are getting a certain recognition, but there are nearly no officers. I've seen a warrant officer go into a jail cell to get a colonel out, and be that colonel's reference, for over a year.
In my opinion, operational stress is the element that should be the topic of in-depth study.
Senator Kirby, in his work that he's doing now on mental health across the country, has the founder of the operational stress program working with him, Colonel Stéphane Grenier, and he would be an excellent witness. He created it. I remember I was still serving, and we didn't believe it. The professionals really pooh-poohed it, yet it has proven to be outstanding to the extent that Senator Kirby is now looking at creating this capability within society at large.