When talking about PTSD, as Chief Tousignant said, only within the last little have we really understood that although PTSD and operational stress injuries have been identified within the Canadian Forces and other military, those types of symptoms are also very prevalent in policing. Although there isn't a lot of research done on it, some of the preliminary evidence shows us that the symptoms exhibited in PTSD, such as sleep disorders, addictions, depression, and anxiety, those types of things, also occur because of issues around what's called “compassion fatigue”.
Compassion fatigue comes from dealing with the unfixable suffering that police officers in general—not just the RCMP, but police officers everywhere—are confronted with on a day in, day out basis. Those symptoms may not reach the level of PTSD where they can be identified as that disorder, but they're very real, and we have several members who are dealing with them. On top of that, there are situations within the policing world where people are confronted by very dangerous and deadly situations, where the traditional PTSD--if I can say that--would exhibit its signs and symptoms.
As the chief talked about, we are in collaboration with the Canadian Forces and VAC on the joint network of operational stress injury clinics. Without getting into too much detail on that--they're not run by us, so I don't want to overstep my boundaries--they offer programs to help people through those tough times. They help them with depression, anxiety, and those types of things.
On top of that, we've also completed two pilots looking at restoration, education, and development. It's a resilience-based type of program for our police officers who are in very specific situations. The first pilot was for traffic analyst reconstructionists, who deal with the death and destruction of traffic crashes. The second one was for forensic identity specialists, who go to horrific crime scenes.
They're not necessarily in harm's way, like the military on the front lines, but they experience these compassion-fatiguing incidents day in, day out as part of their duties. We're just realizing that those things take a real toll on the human soul, so we're looking at that. We've had great preliminary results.