Something that was interesting to us when we started this program was that we initially thought it would be mostly women with PTSD. That was the premise under which it was first established, but what we noticed was that almost every woman who came into our program also had the experience of MST, military sexual trauma. However, it goes beyond that into betrayal trauma and institutional trauma. A lot of this also occurred after women had transitioned into veterans.
The feelings of betrayal happen when somebody dedicates their life to this purpose—to keeping the country safe, as Anna-Lisa and the other veterans have said, like a blank cheque with your life on it—and are then mistreated with belittling, condescending and dehumanizing disrespect from the institution, from VAC, and there is a complete lack of transparency. There have been huge changes with women veterans' rehabilitation services that we haven't heard discussed in a lot of these meetings and that people don't even seem to know about because there's absolutely no transparency.
That's a concern for us. That is impacting the female veterans whom we see. It's not just PTSD. It's not just MST. They often try to put them in these little categories and say, “You have sexual trauma. You have PTSD. We can look at only those things”, but it's so much more complex. That's why you have to have these really holisitic, person-centred, very individual-focused programs and the training and the experience of the people delivering those programs. That's what our program offers.
A lot of the women we see have also been sent to addictions centres when they don't have addictions. They are just basically institutionalized because the military says, “Well, we don't know what to do with you. We don't want you to kill yourself, so we'll just chuck you in an institution and take away all of your privacy, your belongings, your autonomy and your dignity.” They may have a few counselling sessions, but there's basically no programming.
I don't want to speak too poorly of them. I'm sure some of them have good programs. I know that some of the bigger ones are not so good.
What we have to first, then, is undo the trauma they have experienced in these institutions.
A major overhaul definitely needs to happen in terms of understanding women's needs and the toxic culture that is happening in at least VAC. The toxic culture really happens when people don't understand other people's needs. The leadership really needs to understand women's needs, and then, as we see it, there needs to be a whole overhaul of the culture.
I'm not sure if that answers your question directly, but it's a complex issue and we can't just be narrow-minded about it. We need to let them make the decisions.
With a person-centred approach, the person, the client, is the expert. That's really important to empowering them, especially when they are disempowered. When you're seeking help, you are disempowered and you are feeling very low, so it's really important that we can empower those women. When we send them to institutions, strip away their power and make their dealings with VAC so complex, the people who really need help cannot get it.
The whole process really needs to be streamlined, simplified and overhauled completely. Women need to be allowed to make decisions on their health care because they're the experts.