That's an excellent question.
Yes, I was trained initially in CBT. There is prolonged exposure therapy that's used, trauma-related exposure.
What I was talking about is that I don't like the cookie-cutter rehab that's going on, because it's about trying to fit everybody into the same kind of process. I do feel that with vets or with the RCMP the journey is so different that new approaches might be necessary.
I have some vets who really benefit from therapy with horses. I don't know what you call it in English, but it's a new kind of therapy that helps vets. One of the main problems with PTSD is the digestion of emotional baggage, which a lot of people have trouble with. Whatever helps the person connect with their emotions and learn to manage their emotions will prevent the PTSD from getting bigger. All those approaches that help the veterans connect with their emotions in a non-threatening way—therapy with horses is one of them—can be very beneficial.
I know that EMDR is something that's used. This is one of the approaches I've never used before. It's not part of my arsenal, so I cannot comment on this.
There's another type of therapy that's used more than that. It's called “narrative therapy”, where there is the idea of making a story about the whole journey the person goes through—in this case, in their professional life—to make milestones. Trauma is something that changes you forever, but it doesn't mean that it has to change you only negatively. Post-traumatic growth and resilience have been studied, and a lot of people journey out of that. There is a possibility for growth through it, but there is a very tough moment when people need to be helped. What narrative therapy does is connect or integrate all the parts of your life together and make sense of them, which is what resilience is about. It's about integrating every part of your life together and being comfortable with it, with better emotional management, which is not something that is thought of in the armed forces. We can understand that in a certain way, but I think the way people are trained to do difficult work like police work or military work sometimes requires putting aside the emotional world. That doesn't mean it goes away. It just gets accumulated and complicated.
All the approaches to trauma are about making it simpler to digest those things and making it okay to address those things. That's what I was saying about humiliation and shame, because I feel that those are things that can lead to suicide. People would rather disappear than have to face those emotions. They don't know how to deal with them, and they are not in an environment where it's okay to deal with them.
I don't know if this answers your question.