Evidence of meeting #30 for Veterans Affairs in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was illness.
A recording is available from Parliament.
4:15 p.m.
Liberal
Colin Fraser Liberal West Nova, NS
Thank you.
With regard to the issue of mental health, can you give us a sense of how many members actually leave the armed forces with significant mental health issues? Do we know how many we're talking about?
4:15 p.m.
BGen Hugh MacKay
It's interesting: we have had a little bit of a fluctuation in the number of people leaving the military for medical reasons. I believe last year we had about 2,000 leaving for medical reasons, and only 22% of those left for mental health reasons. The reason I say it's interesting is that in the previous several years, it was more on the order of 34% to 40% who were leaving for mental health issues, so I was a little surprised to see that the number had gone down.
4:15 p.m.
BGen Hugh MacKay
It's 22%, I believe, who were—
4:15 p.m.
BGen Hugh MacKay
According to the numbers I was given, it is.
4:15 p.m.
Liberal
Colin Fraser Liberal West Nova, NS
Is there any way to track how many of those may have had pre-existing mental health issues when they came into the forces? Are there any statistics on that?
4:15 p.m.
BGen Hugh MacKay
I don't believe we do an analysis that looks at pre-existing conditions and whether they're related to being released for medical reasons from the forces at this time.
4:15 p.m.
Liberal
Colin Fraser Liberal West Nova, NS
You mentioned that 31 of 37 health services centres have some level of specialized mental health services. For the six that don't, is there a reason why they wouldn't have those, or do you think it would be beneficial to look at having those at all of the health service centres?
4:15 p.m.
BGen Hugh MacKay
They're just small clinics, so the patient population they are supporting doesn't really warrant having a full-time mental health professional. They certainly have access to local civilian mental health providers to whom they would be able to refer patients to meet the needs of the members who are there.
4:15 p.m.
Liberal
Colin Fraser Liberal West Nova, NS
The outreach to communities across the country would then be serviced using technological means. I think there was talk of telecommunication.
4:15 p.m.
BGen Hugh MacKay
We have internal telemental health within the Canadian Armed Forces, that can go clinic to clinic to be able to provide service. We also have a network of 5,000 mental health providers who work in the civilian community and who are registered to be providers for the Canadian Armed Forces if we need them. We simply send referrals to those health care providers, if we have a need based on the particular region, or a wait list, or something to that effect.
4:15 p.m.
Liberal
Colin Fraser Liberal West Nova, NS
When someone presents in theatre with a mental health difficulty, what happens? Is there any case of somebody having been dealt with, or sent back home, for example, while in theatre, after having presented with a mental health issue that was identified and that would make it difficult for that person to remain in theatre? Do you have any examples of that?
4:15 p.m.
BGen Hugh MacKay
I can only tell you what the policy would be. We would try to meet their needs as close to the front as possible. We've learned over time that treatment nearer to the operation and your buddies is better for you. But if we felt that retaining them in theatre wasn't going to be to their benefit, then we would arrange for them to be repatriated home to get more intensive care.
4:20 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Neil Ellis
I want to ask you for a clarification. Do you have any of those statistics for people who presented in theatre and whether they were sent home? When you get back, could you send them to us? Or do you have numbers for those who did present? Do you keep track of those?
4:20 p.m.
Col Andrew Downes
I don't think we have numbers on how many people were sent back, or not, with mental illness. I'm not aware of any such statistics.
4:20 p.m.
Col Andrew Downes
I know people were sent back, but I don't know that we have a list of who those people were.
November 15th, 2016 / 4:20 p.m.
Liberal
Bob Bratina Liberal Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON
What is the history of this, in terms of when it became apparent to the military that there was a unique situation with regard to suicide? Are we able to track a point at which somebody said “We're seeing things here that we haven't seen before”?
4:20 p.m.
BGen Hugh MacKay
We've really been keeping suicide statistics and reporting on them since 1995. Our suicide statistics have said to us that the suicide rate in the Canadian Armed Forces has been at the same or about the same rate you would see in the Canadian population. It still is at about that rate.
We did a different analysis in 2014, in which we broke out the army, navy, and air force environments. In that analysis, we were able to see that at about the year 2006, there was a deviation or the start of an increase in the suicide rate in the army compared with that in the air force and the navy.
When you look at all of the statistics for the Canadian Armed Forces writ large, we're still at the same rate or about the same rate as in the Canadian general population, but that army rate started to rise as of about 2006. It has been sort of stabilized to the rate it is at now for the past couple of years.
4:20 p.m.
Liberal
Bob Bratina Liberal Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON
The American experience—I looked the numbers up—seems to be that for the general population it is 13 per 100,000, and for the U.S. military it's 30 per 100,000. A lot of our missions and deployments have been somewhat similar, so would you stand by the figures that would indicate that non-army personnel experience suicide at a lower rate than do army personnel, if you're saying it balances out overall?