Veterans Affairs committee  I'm sure the committee is aware of this, but I have probably been to Canada three or four times to conduct training of Canadian mental health professionals on the battlemind training system. Where it's currently being used is in the third location decompression site in Cyprus. I

Veterans Affairs committee  You're welcome. Thank you, Ma'am.

Veterans Affairs committee  Within the Department of the Army and Department of Veterans Affairs there is a tremendous amount of collaboration. Of course I make all of our findings and reports available to everyone, including Canada. As you know, all of this has been presented and given to the technical coo

Veterans Affairs committee  Within the Department of Veterans Affairs, the veterans centres, the folks who are doing the outreach for the Department of Veterans Affairs, have adopted the battlemind training framework as a way of de-stigmatizing mental health and a way to get service members who need help to

Veterans Affairs committee  Sir, you can have them for free. You can download them for free. There is no cost. They are for everyone.

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes. It's on a new website also. The original website was www.battlemind.org, and if you type that in it will take you to our new website, which is www.battlemind.army.mil. Either one of those will take you right to it, and you can download all of the stuff. It's free of charge.

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes, sir. That's correct.

Veterans Affairs committee  That's a very good question. Thank you, Ma'am. Obviously, we think that we need to take a systems approach, so we now have data showing that the pre-deployment training is effective when assessed during the deployment. We do not have good outcome data from the battlemind psycho

Veterans Affairs committee  Ma'am, that's a very good question. We just have no idea; we have no data looking at its effectiveness two or three years, or ten or twenty years, or decades later in terms of service members still suffering from mental health issues. My sense is that you would probably need to

Veterans Affairs committee  The air force is translating the battlemind training program into a program they're calling “Wheels Down”, using an air force slogan; and the navy Seabees do use the battlemind training during post-deployment at their third location decompression site. The marines do not use it;

Veterans Affairs committee  No, the marines do not use it at all. They don't use any component of it.

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes, but each service is doing its own adaptation of it based on what was first developed in the army.

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes, sir, we do. In fact we have several courses in which we do that. The main course is the combat operational stress control course, which is taught in San Antonio, Texas. Every behavioural health care provider deploying to Iraq or Afghanistan has to attend this four-day course

Veterans Affairs committee  It's ongoing. I don't know if I could ever say it has been fully transitioned. As people turn over and as people change, you have to train more people. We now have a train-the-trainer course in the battlemind training system, and that's being pushed out. Not only do you have to t

Veterans Affairs committee  No, it's different. The Department of Veterans Affairs has unique requirements and different approaches in how mental health care is provided. That training is separate.