Your question speaks to a very important issue facing those who are leaving the military today. The important element here is that mental health, including PTSD, is an issue that is very complex and the response to it and the way that we work with it is multi-faceted.
When someone is about to leave the military, even if it's a career that they've loved and enjoyed, as they begin to transition out, especially if they have a post-traumatic stress disorder or any other disorder, they typically would have been case managed within DND before they leave the department. As they are transitioning, the case manager, who is a nursing officer within DND, would have been working with them to give them the support they needed. For most of those individuals, that begins when they are in DND; it doesn't start when they come to Veterans Affairs Canada.
In the military they've made a lot of progress in opening up discussion around issues like this, as has society in general. Mental health is beginning to be treated more openly as an illness like any other. So in the military it will be recognized and they will begin to get case management services. When they transition, the partnership with VAC means that we will find out more about that person before they leave. We'll know a bit about their history and some of the issues they're facing. They likely will have been receiving treatment within the military. When they transition to Veterans Affairs Canada, we work with them in a transition interview to make sure that we bridge the services to the extent possible, so that they come to us in such a way that we're supporting them at the point when they leave. So, as soon as they leave, we're able to support them from that step forward.
Our case managers are trained to understand mental health issues and post-traumatic stress. If an injured individual doesn't want to share that, our case managers are trained to use certain cues and certain questions to try to elevate the issue or tease it out and find out more. It's becoming very much a part of the day-to-day work of our case managers.
Once they have identified that the individual is looking for help, the person will have access to a full range of treatment, be it from a psychologist, psychiatrist, clinical care managers, or people in the community who provide very customized service for post-traumatic stress. Beyond that, we can put them in touch with the peer support network I spoke about a moment ago. It consists of about 26 individuals across the country who have gone through the same thing, who have had a military career, left it, and suffer from an operational stress injury—an umbrella term that includes PTSD and other anxiety issues, etc. They can have peers give them counselling and support.
At the end of the day, there's a rehabilitation program designed to help that individual become stabilized with their PTSD, to understand it, to get the support they need, and to engage their family fully in it because that's going to be key. Our goal is early intervention. The sooner we get access and conversation going with the individual, the greater the chance of success.
We have about 14,000 clients of Veterans Affairs who have mental health issues, and upwards of 10,000 of them have post-traumatic stress disorder. It's becoming very much front and centre in our world. With our research colleagues in Bernard's area, we're finding out more and learning from other countries about what they're doing. So this is all coming together to provide the kind of support that these individuals would need.
When they are in treatment for this in Veterans Affairs' rehab program, there's no time limit on that. It's not like they come into a rehab program and they have six months to get better. It's not like that at all. They take the time they need, and that's a cornerstone of the new Veterans Charter. That's a policy that exists now that was not available to us before this charter was put in place.