Historically, in 1997 there was a lot of talk about post-traumatic stress disorder, so that's how they started the program, by evaluating whether this program was going to affect somebody's PTSD symptoms. Closely linked to that are the depression symptoms and their self-esteem rating. Historically, three measures were used to determine the success of the program.
Statistically, the decrease in depression and PTSD symptoms that took place during the program's development was very significant. In the last two years, by working closely with some of the researchers across Canada at the CIMVHR conference, we've started to move away from post-traumatic stress as being the only indicator, as we see it as just one of the issues that military people deal with when they're leaving the forces.
We've actually, I would say, seen tunnel vision around post-traumatic stress, to a certain extent. That's why we've moved to a more inclusive survey called the OQ-45. It's a standard program evaluation survey being used by Veterans Affairs. David Ross has been the champion of this survey. They have the funding there to do it. We've been using that. It measures not only somebody's general mental health, but also their relationship with their family, their satisfaction with their careers. Again, we've been doing those for the group, right after the group, three, six, and twelve months following, and they've all been very successful. I can say there have been clinically and statistically significant increases in the case of the OQ-45.