Veterans Affairs committee  Yes, I would agree. We need more case managers, and case managers who are not so inundated with files that they can't assess the families. Also, we need to move past this ideology we have that it is the veteran only. It is not the veteran only. It is everybody that is close by.

Veterans Affairs committee  When it comes to military families, we know that children and adolescents in military families take on responsibilities. Everybody chips in with the idea of “team”. So when those families leave service, those children already know those roles. When there's distress in the familie

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes. I'm very familiar with OSISS and the workers here in Nova Scotia. It has changed quite a bit over time. There were a lot of conditions put on it. Veterans would go and then didn't feel safe, in that they couldn't really talk about things that were of concern to them. There

Veterans Affairs committee  No, Mr. Casey, it's not a program that I'm familiar with. Most of the people we saw.... I should say that at the end of 2019, before COVID, that clinic was closed, just because there was so much frustration and burnout among our staff that, really, it's back to individuals. To an

Veterans Affairs committee  No. I closed the clinic itself just because I had staff retiring and just because of the years of frustrations and just not being able to do other types of work that have shown a benefit. It was just time on that....

Veterans Affairs committee  Among the 60%, it would come down to the circumstances of their release from the military. If they're disgruntled about their release, if they want to stay in uniform and they still have a military code, they really don't want to move into civilian life and accept that they have

Veterans Affairs committee  I think, stepping back, that we need to debrief people before they leave the military culture, so they're not leaving angry, ashamed and feeling like a failure. That just continues and continues, and we're left trying to undo those effects.

Veterans Affairs committee  Not to get too far off track, but I think it really becomes part of, and an extension of, an ideology that those responsible for managing family life, home life and the emotional culture of that home were, by default, women. Inadvertently or due to not thinking it through, I thi

Veterans Affairs committee  It's by default that the spouses or partners are given this responsibility because there's nothing else available. Clinicians are not going to meet with them in a crisis. We'll meet with them two or three weeks, and sometimes a month, down the road, so by default it's partners an

Veterans Affairs committee  Thank you, Chair, and thank you for the invitation. My comments reflect our clinical work with serving and retired military members, along with some of my research at Mount Saint Vincent University. I served in the navy for about nine years, then as a psychologist at the milita