National Defence committee  When I arrived, there was an American psychiatrist, and she left after a month and a half or two months. She was with the American military. They rotated their team, which included the psychiatrists, and they brought in a new team that was made up differently.

National Defence committee  Yes.

National Defence committee  I believe so. I think the population in the CAF is more like 10,000, but I might be wrong.

National Defence committee  The medical facility there is multinationally staffed, so we work alongside our American colleagues, the Dutch, the Finns, and in some cases the Australians and the Brits. For the most part the Brits have their own medical people, and people would come in from the British military and see their own British clinic facility, so we didn't see a whole lot of the Brits.

National Defence committee  I don't have those figures for you, but they're pretty low. I don't have exact figures.

National Defence committee  I want to clarify your question. You're asking me about the situation in Kandahar, when I was seeing patients who came in with difficulties--what percentage of them subsequently went back to work and may have been on medication?

National Defence committee  We have studies on paroxetine and on sertraline. There's also a fair amount of evidence for fluoxetine. Now, these medications are anti-depressants, so they're also very effective for depression. So generally speaking, from my own clinical practice, they would be medications of first choice for treatment of a person who meets the criteria for diagnosis, who is informed of the choices, and decides that this is something they want to try.

National Defence committee  They're effective, yes.

National Defence committee  The real advantage of these medications is that they're actually quite well tolerated. They actually don't have much in the way of side effects initially. If you're going to prescribe a medication, whether it's in Canada or on Kandahar airfield, first of all you want to see that the person is tolerating the medication.

National Defence committee  No, I would say there are not a lot.

National Defence committee  I can't be more specific than that. I believe General Jaeger is trying to track down numbers for the committee.

National Defence committee  It sounds to me as though you have three questions there. The first one--

National Defence committee  --was something to the effect of what the others would think if their corporal came back and he was taking a medication. It's up to that corporal whether or not he wants to share with his co-workers that he's taking a medication, if in fact that happens. I would remind you again that I believe these numbers are quite small.

National Defence committee  Good afternoon. By way of introduction, my name is Dr. Theresa Girvin. I'm a lieutenant-colonel in the military. I've been in for 19 years now. I have specialist training in psychiatry. I joined the forces 19 years ago while attending the University of British Columbia. Following that, I did my two-year family medicine residency at McGill, and some time later I did the psychiatry residency at the University of Ottawa.

National Defence committee  Intimately connected with that is an assessment process. So I don't just prescribe; I make the diagnosis. I do the assessment of the patient first.