National Defence committee  Telemental health is a system that we put in place a couple of years ago. It enables clinicians to remotely provide care to mental health patients. We always have another health care provider on location with the patient who is receiving care so that should they develop some is

National Defence committee  As I said, it's a crude analysis. The difficulty is that the evidence to support the other side, to show that this is causing other long-term neuropsychiatric illnesses and suicide, is just not there for us to even be able to do an analysis about when you might expect to see an e

National Defence committee  Mefloquine, when it was used—I presume you're referring to the Somalia time frame—had been licensed and met the safety and effectiveness requirements of numerous regulatory bodies in many other countries, and in fact it was licensed shortly after the start of the Somalia deployme

National Defence committee  I'm not aware of what studies, other than inquiries, are being used as evidence not to use it.

National Defence committee  I am in the process of reviewing the report that I received to make a policy recommendation. I will say, though, that I haven't been told by the U.S. which study they used to base their policy decision on, nor have I been told by the Germans which studies they used to base their

National Defence committee  We believe that we are seeing the change in culture that's necessary. Part of the evidence to that is what we found in the recent survey with respect to the willingness of our members to come forward and ask for assistance. It wasn't just to the health system; it was to their bos

National Defence committee  The start of the increase in the suicide rate in the Canadian army started in 2006. That's when we started to see it. Since the end of the mission, we've started to see it stabilize again.

National Defence committee  Yes.

National Defence committee  If you look at our study as well, what hadn't been present before was a potential linkage between risk of suicide and deployment. Although it's still not statistically significant, it's close enough to statistical significance that we believe we need to take a look at it. I think

National Defence committee  We have not undertaken a specific investigation with respect to that. That certainly is the greatest deployment we had that is contributing to it. Andrew, would you comment?

National Defence committee  It would be things that may contribute to the risk of developing mental illness with subsequent traumas in life.

National Defence committee  Recruits and personnel going to Royal Military College go through the same screening process before they come in. It helps us know whether they've had a history of mental illness. Part of the reason we have undertaken this road to mental readiness training is to ensure that sta

National Defence committee  I don't believe we've had any engagement with the judicial system, although we have worked, and do work, with the military police with respect to the handoff policy that I referred to earlier. Usually the incident or the stress that we're talking about isn't a result of a court

National Defence committee  I see what you're saying. Okay. We are available to advise, and we do advise, assisting officers and the JAG officers as they consider cases against military members. Often, though, the types of triggers that we are talking about occur in the civilian legal system, so we're less

National Defence committee  We haven't looked at this particularly from a health services perspective, but I know that within military personnel command they have close relationships with other military and look at the programs they have in place to help address the kinds of stressors that go on in military