It's a very good question. Thank you for that.
Again, I'm a psychiatrist. I work in the mental health world. Certainly, from my perspective, from the time I started working for the Canadian Armed Forces, the big change has been our participation in Afghanistan. People coming back from those deployments have been suffering from trauma-related injuries and other mental health injuries. Everyone who deploys does not necessarily develop PTSD; they can develop other mental health problems as well, and sometimes they develop several.
As those members were released from the military over time, Veterans Affairs Canada has seen a similar increase in younger veterans coming into their system with mental health problems and needing care. As I remember from when I was still in the military, Veterans Affairs Canada has been very forward-looking. In the early to mid-2000s it started setting up what are called operational stress injury clinics across the country. We now have 11 of them across Canada. We also now have satellite clinics coming out of those clinics. These are clinics where we have multidisciplinary teams, specially trained and with a great deal of experience, treating post-traumatic stress disorder and other operational stress injuries.
People were recognizing that something was happening. Because of our very good relationship with our colleagues in the CF, we were able to see what was happening and the growth in the numbers of those with PTSD coming back from deployment. We were able to say that we had better set up some services, because we're going to have these men and women coming into our system.