Thanks very much, sir.
Basically, we have chosen to leave as much time as possible for questions, so we won't make opening remarks.
Steph and I started this journey about ten years ago as majors. I'm the clinical lead and he's been on the non-clinical side for all the changes that have occurred in DND.
My understanding was that this committee was particularly interested in suicide and suicide prevention, so what I'll try to do--cut me off whenever I've run out of time--is give you a brief overview of the Canadian Forces suicide prevention, including the expert panel we had last year, just in terms of the broad interdisciplinary approach we have within our own organization.
Veterans Affairs colleagues were at this meeting, and they have modified...and they have their own program as well, which is somewhat different. It will become evident, as I speak, that it's very difficult to compare both organizations. We're a large organization; we have 6,000 people in the Canadian Forces health services; we run large clinics; Stadacona has 50 mental health professionals working in this very model. It's a very different thing to try to compare.
The first slide looks at our suicide rates, which are male suicides that are tracked. Contrary to what the media says, we have been tracking very carefully since 1996. I'll speak at the end about how we're tracking them even more closely. We haven't had an increase of serving members since the Afghan conflict began. Nobody can predict the future, but those are the stats we have for now.
In September 2009, the Surgeon General convened, asked us to put together, an expert panel on suicide prevention. The goals were to review what the CF is doing now, evaluate our approach against the scientific literature and the practice of our allies, and recommend opportunities to strengthen the program.
The reason for this was not that we are having the crisis that the U.S. is experiencing with a very high rate, but that suicide and suicide prevention is a major public health issue in this country. It behooves us, as the CF, to have the best practices in place that we can. We're not “happy” that our rate is below civilian society--the loss of every soldier is a loss to us--and if we can do anything to reduce that number, to prevent it, that's our goal.
Very briefly, I'll give you the range of people. We have our CF folks. With our team we have deployment health and epidemiology folks. We have psychiatrists represented, and social workers, primary care physicians, mental health nurses, as well as some of our educators.
We have external consultants. We have our colleagues Dr. Thompson and Dr. Ross from Veterans Affairs. Professor Links is a very important person. He's probably the most renowned suicide expert in Canada, as the chair in suicide studies at St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto. Colonel Ritchie is the advisor to the Surgeon General, so a big player in the U.S.; Lieutenant Colonel Bell, likewise. Andrew Cohn travelled all the way from Australia. Australia does some very interesting things--similar force, similar history, and they don't have all the big hospitals that the U.S. has. It's the same idea of where do we put our high-risk patients; the Australians have a similar thing. We have colleagues from the U.K., Neil Greenberg and Nicola Fear.
The name of a Dutch colleague is not appearing on the slide. I apologize for that....
Oh, there she is: Lieutenant-Colonel Horstman.