Okay, because I'm speaking to the concept of universality of service. We have heard lots of testimony of people who were basically minimizing or concealing symptoms in the early stages, because they were afraid that if they spoke up they'd no longer meet universality of service, and they'd be out of the military. They'd conceal this until they had a devastating injury that would have been minor had it been dealt with earlier.
Thank you for that.
Colonel Maurais, this is a very difficult question and I'm going to have to put a long preamble on it so that you understand what I'm getting at with this. The issue I'm getting at is not in regard to the practice within the chaplaincy, but in regard to perhaps faith groups in the community. I'm talking about the issue of suicide in the military. We know it happens and we know that in military and in veterans we do everything we can to prevent suicide, yet it still happens. It happens in the community.
I was at Yardah for 20 years, and dealt with a lot of suicide among patients and actually among a couple of co-workers. One of the things that was the trauma for families afterwards.... And, again, this is part of my preamble. I have no reason to believe this would be something in the chaplaincy, but in the community there are still today faith groups that have a tremendous stigma against suicide. I've had family members tell me that they were afraid the word would get out because there are churches today that will not bury family members who have committed suicide. It still happens today.
Has your department had any role in perhaps liaising with faith groups in the community to help remove this stigma that tends to re-traumatize families when they have to deal with this?