Veterans Affairs committee  Mr. Chair, Mr. Vice-Chair, and members of the committee, my name is Sanela Dursun. I am the director of the personnel and family support research organization at the Department of National Defence, responsible for the Canadian Armed Forces psychosocial health dynamics research, c

National Defence committee  Thank you, sir, for the question. As you can appreciate, it certainly is a complex issue, mental health issues, including PTSD. It is a relatively new disease and the comorbidity rates are really high, which means that lots of people who are diagnosed with PTSD are all suffering

National Defence committee  Thank you for the question. Indeed we have a comprehensive research program that looks at the risk factors for PTSD and other operational stress injuries. The loop back you're asking about has a number of tools. We do have a tool to survey people while they are in the theatre.

National Defence committee  I can talk about the research we do with military families and how that research supports the programs and services that are delivered out of military family resource centres. We do have a comprehensive family research program in DRDC. We do surveys of military spouses, pan-CF

National Defence committee  As a result of our research, once we compile the results, we basically go back and say, okay, these are the priority issues. I'll give you an example. In the last survey of military spouses, we looked at the key services, the most difficult to establish once the families moved

National Defence committee  Absolutely, they've used the information that we...and this is an ongoing program of research. I'm familiar with research over the past 10 years. Over the past 10 years we've provided that information. I personally had an opportunity to present at the highest level, to the Arme