Evidence of meeting #40 for Veterans Affairs in the 40th Parliament, 3rd session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was battlesmart.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Judy Sgro Liberal York West, ON
Thank you very much for sharing the information with us today.
You indicated earlier the issue that some of the individuals who have committed suicide may have been predisposed to do that. Are you referring to their being predisposed prior to entering the military? If that's the case, are they not put through some fairly extensive testing on their mental capacity or mental status when they apply, prior to participating in and joining the forces?
LCol Andrew Cohn
Absolutely.
In our defence force everyone who joins, either as an officer or as an enlistee, is put through psychological testing. We administer intelligence testing and we have an army general classification test. It's a bulk-administered IQ test. They also have a one-on-one interview with a psychologist.
However, the limitation with this method is that the applicant can choose to withhold information from the psychologist, so we can only make an assessment based on what the applicant tells us. If the applicant has made a prior suicide attempt or has had mental health problems in the past and has sought treatment and doesn't disclose that in the psychological assessment, that person can be enlisted, and we don't know anything about it.
Certainly, when we've gone through the psychological files of a number of the people who have suicided, we have seen that they have disclosed some things that at the time they enlisted may not have been considered big issues. With the benefit of hindsight, you can start putting things into place and see what they told to the recruiting psychologist. For example, it didn't seem like a major issue at the time that he'd experimented with cannabis a few years ago--it was just experimentation--or he came from a broken family, and that didn't seem like a major issue at the time as well, but when you start putting these things together with the benefit of hindsight after the person has suicided, you start seeing that maybe this person did have some predisposing factors.
Liberal
Judy Sgro Liberal York West, ON
I think many of us thought as we were doing this study that suicide was a result of many of them coming back from deployment in places like Afghanistan and having witnessed the kinds of things that we know the men and women have observed over there. I found it interesting that many of the individuals who had committed suicide had not even been deployed.
LCol Andrew Cohn
Yes.
As I mentioned, the major factors for our members who have suicided tend to be things like relationship breakups or these predisposing factors that I was talking about. They could be exacerbated by the conditions of service. A number of members who have suicided had been medically downgraded and been put into rehabilitation platoons. They'd been taken away from their units and put in rehab and of course had been in there for quite a while trying to recover from their medical condition. Things like that can really start to tip people over the edge, especially if they have these predisposing things that I was talking about—for example, difficulty in forming friendships easily, or low self-esteem issues. It's only when you start doing a post-event review and start looking at the nitty-gritty of what these people were dealing with in their lives and what they were dealing with before they joined the defence force that you start piecing things together.
What we find is that our defence force is a microcosm of our society. In our Australian society, it seems that 15- to 25-year-olds are that high risk group for suicide, and a lot of our young soldiers are in that age group. They're dealing with the same sort of societal issues as people outside defence.
Conservative
February 28th, 2011 / 4:10 p.m.
Conservative
Greg Kerr Conservative West Nova, NS
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Colonel Cohn, for joining us. We very much appreciate your input today.
We do hear of some similar challenges that we face. Regardless of where our armed forces are, there are some similar challenges.
I was interested in looking at combat versus non-combat. You've answered that aspect to an extent with the last question, so I'm not going to pursue that at the moment, except to ask you if you use peer support mechanisms, in the sense that you have those who have either been through the stress or have family members who have been through it. Do you make them available for your soldiers, particularly in your decompression terms as they come home? Do you use the peer support mechanism?
LCol Andrew Cohn
We haven't actually been using peer support mechanisms as much as we could have or should have been. We are about to embark on a major mental health initiative in our defence force called “Keep Your Mates Safe” as peer support.
That means we are going to be training up selected members from units. Commanding officers will choose members of their units who will be trained up as mental health peer support persons. Those persons will be taught suicide prevention. Beyond the basic suicide awareness, they will be taught actual skills to identify whether someone may be at risk of suicide and to know what to do to keep that person safe.
They will be taught BattleSMART principles to be able to help someone who may be suffering at the time, or who may be depressed or anxious. They will be able to understand the fundamentals of BattleSMART in order to help that person cope.
These peer support people are going to be identified, and they are going to be taught more skills than your average soldier. They will to be able to help keep someone safe if they are at risk of suicide. They will know more about mental health things than your average soldier does, so yes, we are starting to come on board with peer support.
Conservative
Greg Kerr Conservative West Nova, NS
Okay. I appreciate that.
We've had some additional challenges, particularly in this last year, but one of the questions we've been asked repeatedly--and there's quite a bit of work going on in Canada--is about a closer working relationship between our defence forces and the Veterans Affairs department people. In other words, there is the idea that with the transition from one to the other, the process starts earlier, so that Veterans Affairs is actually in contact within the department with soldiers long before they're actually going to transition out.
How does that work between your defence forces and your veterans affairs?
LCol Andrew Cohn
As I mentioned, we got this BattleSMART version last month, which we are going to be teaching people before they leave the defence force so that they will have the coping strategies they're going to need when they transition out of defence. BattleSMART is one initiative.
We are starting to work much more closely with our Department of Veterans' Affairs. We have a transition section within defence that works closely with veterans' affairs. The transition section runs transition courses for members who are leaving defence. There is a two-day course. The members are given presentations on applying for jobs and writing a curriculum vitae and all the things they need to know, so that when they leave defence, they will have a better understanding of life outside.
They're given a range of different presentations on topics such as applying for medical health benefits, because although our defence members are covered for dental and medical, once they leave, they're going to have to apply for health insurance. There are two days devoted to helping that person during the transition out of defence.
Certainly we are looking at ways we can work much more closely with our veterans' affairs department to help smooth their transition process.
Conservative
Bloc
Guy André Bloc Berthier—Maskinongé, QC
I have a quick question for you, so our exchange is not yet over.
What are the key differences between the Australian system for monitoring soldiers and veterans and the system we have here in Canada? Have you identified the differences?
LCol Andrew Cohn
I'm not aware of a lot of differences. I haven't had a lot of close contact with the Canadians, but I was over there in Nova Scotia in 2009 to help with the development of the mental health suicide prevention program framework for the Canadian armed forces. I was part of an expert panel, so I got to know a bit about your practices.
In terms of the veteran community, I'm not aware of a lot of differences. I think there are a lot of similarities.
Bloc
Guy André Bloc Berthier—Maskinongé, QC
We were provided with statistics according to which, in Canada, 60% of first-time compensation claims submitted to the Department of Veterans Affairs by veterans or soldiers who are accident victims are refused. We are wondering why this is. This is a process, a system, if you will, that seems to force people to appeal the refusal. At the appeal stage, 42% of the applications are granted. Does Australia have any statistics on compensation claims?
LCol Andrew Cohn
We don't have statistics in our defence force. I would imagine that the Department of Veterans' Affairs does have some sort of statistics. One hears anecdotally from people, of course, that they have put in compensation claims and were turned down, but I'm not aware of any statistics, unfortunately. I'm sorry about that.
Bloc
LCol Andrew Cohn
It's possible, yes. I could speak with our Department of Veterans' Affairs and see whether they could make some statistics available for you.
Bloc
Guy André Bloc Berthier—Maskinongé, QC
I would like you to send them to the committee chair.
I yield the floor to Mr. Vincent.
Bloc
Robert Vincent Bloc Shefford, QC
Earlier, you did say that you had established a connection between suicide causes among your armed forces members and suicide causes in society in general. You talked about alcoholism and couple separation. I would like to know whether you conduct a full investigation when one of your members commits suicide. If so, do you provide financial compensation when it is determined that the cause of suicide was post-traumatic stress in the wake of the individual's multiple-year deployment to a theatre of operations?
LCol Andrew Cohn
There is a procedure that we follow in our defence force. If a member of our defence force suicides, then the service chief.... If it is an army member, the chief of our army will initiate a quick assessment. The unit commander carries out a quick assessment and reports that to the Chief of Army. The Chief of Army then provides a report to our Chief of the Defence Force with a recommendation as to whether there should be a commission of inquiry, or COI.
If there is a recommendation that a COI be conducted, our Chief of the Defence Force will appoint an inquiry officer. The officer will conduct interviews with people who may have been involved, such as the commanding officer, peers of the member who suicided, and doctors and psychologists.
Bloc
Robert Vincent Bloc Shefford, QC
If my understanding is correct, an inquiry is not conducted for all suicides. When a veteran or even someone who is still a member of the Canadian Forces commits suicide, we do not conduct investigations in all cases, but only in cases deemed as inquiry-worthy by the staff.
LCol Andrew Cohn
No, there's not a commission of inquiry in every case when a member suicides. If it is determined that there are procedures or policies or things that happened leading up to the member's suicide that need to be investigated more thoroughly and that those procedures and policies need to be examined in detail because things may have fallen down, then a commission of inquiry is conducted by the defence force.
That said, in every case when one of our members dies by suicide, there is always a coroner's inquiry. The state coroner will look at the member's cause of death, and the coroner may recommend--
Bloc
Robert Vincent Bloc Shefford, QC
Yes, but we're talking about people who have hung themselves; they have taken their own life.
Conservative
Conservative
Phil McColeman Conservative Brant, ON
Thank you, Chair.
I offer my thanks, too, for your taking the time with us today.
As we look at some of the testimony we've had, it's clear to me we're looking for tools to assist veterans in avoiding depression and avoiding what leads to suicide.
You mentioned a social networking site for veterans. Do you have any more details of that? You mentioned as well that it provides them with a tool for self-screening, I suppose in terms of evaluating whether or not they should seek help.
Beyond that, I'd like to expand a little bit and then have you respond to the fullness of what I'd like to get you to reply to. I think you may have the same situation--I'm not sure--but the traditional form of socialization for veterans has been around their own Royal Canadian Legions and the things they came back to after World War II. In our country, as you no doubt know—and you too may have this same type of social networking and buildings where people meet—we have the Legion system, but the modern vets aren't joining. It's not the way they have chosen to socialize, yet it has been so supportive of the World War II vets and the previous vets.
I'm going back to the social media networking, how that might work better, and how we might be able to assist there, but are you also experiencing the whole deterioration of the Legion system? What would you think should come after this?
