Interview: Lt.-Col. Stéphane Grenier

Lieutenant Colonel Stéphane Grenier joined the Canadian Forces in 1983. In 1994 he was deployed to Rwanda for 10 months as the spokesman for the United Nations in Rwanda. Following his return he became team leader and producer in the Canadian Forces Electronic News Gathering team and was deployed for much shorter periods of time to Cambodia, Kuwait, the Arabian Gulf on ship, Africa, Lebanon and Haiti. Upon return from Rwanda, he requested medical help and was misdiagnosed. He was diagnosed in 1997 with PTSD but not told of his diagnosis. In 1999, he was diagnosed for a second time with PTSD and has been in therapy ever since. He took a personal interest in the way the Canadian Forces was dealing with operational stress injuries. He researched the issue and developed concepts to help soldiers deal with what they had experienced while on operations abroad. As a result of his own experiences, his research and consultation with veterans and clinicians, he created the OSISS Program and coined the phrase "Operational Stress Injury".

Below is a transcript of Gillian Findlay's interview with Lt.-Col. Stéphane Grenier, Operational Stress Injury (OSI), Special Advisor, Chief Military Personnel on Oct. 1, 2009 in Ottawa.

DOES ANYBODY HAVE ANY SENSE OF HOW BIG THE STRESS ISSUE IS GOING TO BE FOR THIS COUNTRY AND THESE PEOPLE WHO'VE BEEN FIGHTING IN THAT PARTICULAR WAR?

I think it's fair to say that the impact of this particular conflict, let's not be surprised that the impact from a stress casualty perspective may not actually be higher than what we've witnessed in the post Cold War era in, what I would say, the new era of peacekeeping. And the reason I say that is that the causality of what is causing people to develop post deployment problems may not be exactly the same. They're different. In a sense, I think the public will see the trauma of fighting a war, of prosecuting a war, of killing people, of seeing your buddies die and your subordinates die and all this. And that's something that the public at large will probably understand better than perhaps what happened in the '90s, during the peacekeeping days, which we had thousands of troops exposed to genocides, exposed to very tough situations. And by the nature of the missions Canadian soldiers were on back then, it presented huge moral issues. Huge moral values were shocked, were shaken, and that also is a cause of stress injuries. And so I think now it's a little more obvious for the average Canadian to say oh my god, you know, we should be worried.
Actually, statistically, I think I'm not the first one or the only one who will tell you that it's probably not going to be that much higher. The nature of the injury might be a little different. How you treat it is for doctors to figure out, and they have good therapies, better therapies. But statistically we may not see a huge difference in the end.
That's my opinion right now. Am I right, am I wrong? We'll see.

BUT IT'S STILL GOING TO BE SIGNIFICANT NUMBERS, WHETHER IT'S AN INCREASE OR NOT?

Of course it's significant. I tell you, you know, the token thing is you know, one soldier affected by stress or one injured soldier is one soldier too many. But that's true. It's true because it not only - you see, a physical injury will destabilize a family. It will be difficult to recover from. But there's a certain amount of understanding, an automatic sympathy. And I am not belittling those who are physically injured, at all. But the OSI piece is very hypocritical. It hits people when they least expect it. It's something you don't see. We see it in the behaviours of course, but behaviours are seen as behaviours. They're not seen as a symptom.

So if a veteran or a soldier becomes angry all of a sudden, the reaction normally will be, 'What's wrong with that guy?' Well, is he behaving badly or is he sick? How do you make that difference? But if you see - you know, I had a cast on my leg early on in my career and I got automatic sympathy from my chain of command, even my subordinates. Hey, sir, how're you doing? How's the leg? But when you have an OSI, you don't have any of that. Very little of that. And it makes it a little different to deal with. I would say worse or better, but certainly the challenges are different.

WELL LET'S GO BACK AND TALK ABOUT THAT BECAUSE I'M GUESSING THAT WHEN YOU WERE DEPLOYED IN THE MID '90S, YOU PROBABLY DIDN'T GIVE MUCH THOUGHT TO WHAT WE NOW CALL OPERATIONAL STRESS INJURY, PTSD, ANY OF THAT. WHAT DID YOU KNOW ABOUT IT BACK THEN?

Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Now that I look back, the only thing I probably knew about back then, but it wasn't 'consciente', it wasn't at the top of my consciousness on a day-to-day basis, was you know all the talk about Vietnam. How Vietnam, these soldiers come back and they're crazy, and that's what I had probably at the top of my recollection.

So yeah, at the time, very little knowledge on a personal basis. Professionally very little knowledge as well. And really, when I look back, some of my own subordinates, I remember clearly now, were going through a rough time. And was I a real good officer, a bad officer? I was who I am. I was understanding to a limit, but then I figured okay, enough of this, stop there. Let's move on. We have something to do tomorrow, we better get to the ground. And so certainly looking back, I would have done things differently if I had known then what I know now. But that's then and now is now.

SO YOU WERE PART OF THAT CULTURE AS WELL?

Of course.

THAT OLD STIGMATIZED -

And I don't even think it's - you know, stigma's a big word, isn't it? And I don't know where stigma begins and ends. But I don't know, I might be naïve. But I don't see military people like me come in in the morning and say who can I stigmatize today? You know, who can I be mean to today?

I think culturally we're brought up in a society where you know, we pay a lot of attention to the physical self. And if you look at all the first aid training, just look at that. It's very important stuff, right, how to put a donut on the screwdriver in your arm and things like that. It's very important stuff. Heart attack, CPR, all very important stuff. But what about CPR for the brain? What about that peer intervention, that first aid when somebody is starting to slip, that prevention piece? And so I think that the sheer lack of understanding, of acceptance, of education on what to do means that some people will react negatively and will by default stigmatize or do nothing, or walk on eggshells. And all three of these situations are not good for the person who's having a hard time.

SO HOW DID YOU FIRST ENCOUNTER IT? TELL ME YOUR STORY.

Me? Well Rwanda, around ten months, right? The first part of my tour was with General Dallaire and the second part was with the new force commander because he was replaced by General Tousignant. And you know, for those who recall those days, you'll recall that the mission was, well you know, to make sure that the elections were fair and then civil war breaks out and then genocide happens and all this.

So in the midst of a war, there's a cacophony of activity that occurs all around. And of course, you know, I think that there was some trauma there when I, you know, untangle, you know, what caused my demise after Rwanda. There was certainly trauma, a fair bit of trauma, some grief. Not grief on a personal basis, like I grieved when my father died. I don't think a human being can be in a place where arguably 800,000 people died and work in an environment where - who will not feel grief, even if you don't know these people. And grief is not necessarily crying because your father passed away.

But I think the biggest issue was that moral dilemma, that inability really to do a lot of the things that you know a soldier thinks he or she can do to change the outcome. And really, you know, we always talk about rules of engagement and all of this. But the complexities of rules of engagement are translated on the ground in a split second decision for a young Canadian wearing a uniform. And as clear-cut as rules of engagements are in the legal books, as grey as they sometime are when you're in the field. And so what can you do, what can't you do? And if I do this, what happens? What are the consequences of not acting or acting? But then there's the moral price that I think a lot of soldiers in those days, including myself, paid for that huge debate, that ethical debate - what are we doing? Are we succeeding, are we failing?

And I think that puts it into context for military people. I know my area, but I've often questioned well, why is it that Médecins Sans Frontièresare exposed to a lot of stuff [and] reporters, right? And maybe I'm wrong, but I've rationalized it in the sense that - and I remember dealing with some reporters in Rwanda. And when I look back I thought every night they file their story there was a sense of accomplishment there. There was a sense of hey, we're here to tell a story, I'm telling a story. Médecins Sans Frontières, a lot of people died in their hands perhaps, but they saved a lot of lives. And the good doctor did a lot of good out there.

But the soldier who's ultimately the extension of policies and the politicians who aren't there and who really can't do anything. He's got the power to intervene but he can't. I think there's a sense of huge moral debate, internal, that a lot of soldiers might not even be aware that they're living through.

And perhaps you know this brings to light the Afghan conflict. You know, what is really going through the minds of our soldiers and commanders as the world goes on? I mean who knows? We'll know that a bit later, and that's not for debate right now. But people want to get the job done, but what is the job?

WHEN DID YOU START TO UNDERSTAND THAT THIS STRESS WAS CAUSING DAMAGE IN YOU?

Well it manifested itself pretty soon after my return, but I didn't understand it. I was pretty irritable. I was very disgruntled with my superiors at work. I was insubordinate most days. I remember being asked to do something one day and just lost it, threw everything in the trash and then walked away. And the poor guy who was asking me to do something was probably at a loss, saying what's wrong with him? And I remember this one guy; he was a commander, a navy commander, a really nice guy. And he used to leave earlier than I did. I kind of had duty at night and I had to stay late and all this. And I remember he was so funny because he knew something was wrong. He didn't quite know what to do about it, but he was nice enough to say, how're you doing, Stéphane? And I'd look at him like a deer in the headlights, wondering well what are you asking me that for? I'm fine. Don't I look fine? And then I'd get into a bit of a rage thing.

I can see now that people were trying to reach out, some. Others were just saying hey, he's crazy. Don't talk to him about Rwanda. He's frustrated or you know - But I think that I certainly didn't notice. The day it really hit me hard is the day I almost took my life. That for me was the day where I said there's something wrong. There's something terribly wrong because there was no reason for me to want to do that. And really, that moment is when I realized there's something wrong.

I didn't know what was wrong. And it's funny because even though you hear about these stories and you see the movies about Vietnam, I still didn't make that connection. I never made the connection until the third diagnosis, I think. I kept refusing.
Internally, I felt, no, I don't have a disorder. What do you mean, a disorder? That means I'm not orderly. There's nothing wrong with me. I - what?

And this is why later in time, a few years later, I became a little obsessed at changing terminology. Because I came back from Rwanda injured. I didn't come back from Rwanda crazy. And a lot of our soldiers may end up feeling that they're branded as crazy. And I often say to even clinicians, I say you wonder why we stigmatize mental health conditions. And then I show them the words that are chosen to describe mental health conditions in the diagnostic statistics manual or whatever it's called. And it's all negative words. It's fatigue, it's exhaustion, it's disorders. And so I think language has to do with this.

If I had come back from Rwanda in a culture where we understand that you can be physically injured or injured in the mind and things like that, I might have clued in a lot sooner. I might have accepted my diagnosis a lot sooner. I might have been treatment compliant a lot sooner. I might not have thrown as many pills in the trash as I did, or flushed them down the toilet. And that I think would have helped.

And so how insightful I became took some time. I'm pretty hardheaded. So I remember coming back home with these little brown bags, you know, when you get your medication in MIR, you come home with a brown bag and they're like a little, you know, it's like a bottle, you know, but it's a bottle of pills.

And I remember saying come on! And you know, this was the mid-'90s, so open the toilet bowl, flushed them all down the toilet. We don't do that anymore. But I was just treatment incompliant. I did not want to do that because I think the terminology was all wrong and it took me about four and a half, five years to accept treatment.

THAT LONG?

Well, first time I went in was in 1994. And between the period of 1994 and 1999, I went in different times, for different reasons, because things were falling apart again. And every time I went home, I said no, no, no, I'm going to get over this myself, come on. Come on. You know, you don't have this problem. And so it's only in 1999/2000 interesting enough, when my boss at the time - I changed bosses between then - gave me cultural permission to take care of myself. For some reason - and it's not because he's a colonel, he happens to be who he is, Chris Corrigan gave me cultural permission to go get help. That's what I needed.

WHAT DOES THAT MEAN, CULTURAL PERMISSION?

Well I, it's a term I use. I don't know what it means really. But what it means to me is that the people around me, my institution, is saying go take care of yourself. You're not the same person, the person who was posted here to my headquarters, he was the boss, is a person with this reputation and that's why we have you on our team, and this is what I'm seeing. You've been through a rough patch, my friend. Go get some help. Take some time for yourself. When that happened, and it was a little more complicated than that. He was a little more empathic than that but when that happened, I became treatment compliant.

I don't think I happened to bump into a better doctor. The doctors I had before were as competent as the next one. But culturally, I was resisting because I did not have cultural permission. Nobody needs to give a soldier permission to go seek health care, but when it's in the brain, when it's in the mind, and the stigma perhaps, as we said earlier, all of those things affect and your own perceptions too and the self stigma because you're ashamed of that.

No, I don't think anybody at work was pointing fingers at me, but I thought they were. But that was all in my head. It's part of the problem isn't it? And so that's what I mean when I say cultural permission.

AND ONCE YOU CROSSED THAT BARRIER AND ACCEPTED THAT YOU HAD AN INJURY, AND IT WAS GOING TO REQUIRE TREATMENT, WHAT DID YOU FIND YOURSELF IN? DID YOU FIND YOURSELF IN A PLACE WHERE IT WAS CLEAR TO YOU WHERE THAT TREATMENT WAS COMING FROM AND IT WAS ALL GOING TO BE STRAIGHTFORWARD?

Well, I was in Toronto at the time, so I ended up getting referred to a psychologist who did a lot of work with EMS and firefighters. And the big part of my treatment was a bit of medication, trial and error on a bunch of things, and some of them worked, some of them didn't work, and there was medication on and off for several years.

But the biggest thing for me was the realization that I wasn't going crazy. That normalization process through discussion that this is what happens in somebody's brain. And now I think that - I can't speak clinically, but I do go to presentations and I think there's more and more physical evidence that when somebody's subjected to these moral, traumatic issues all this, that there's actually changes in the brain.

And I think through MRIs this is being proven, in some camps anyways. So when you start making sense of what it is you're feeling every day or going through or all of a sudden you see something and a smell comes up. And you say it's impossible, there's no smell like this here. And you ask around, and people say no, I don't smell that. And you start understanding through therapy that it's you have memories, which are images and thoughts and yes, smells can come back. Because when a smell comes back and there's nobody else smells that, if you're uneducated, you don't know what's going on and you really think you're going nuts. Or when that movie starts playing in your head, you think am I schizophrenic all of a sudden, you know? And so that level of understanding and that normalization is huge, and plus the rest.

I was always referred to good clinical expertise, perhaps not in 1995/96. I think that you know at the time I don't think that the treatment was that robust. But later on, certainly it was not that bad, but I wasn't accepting it.

WHEN DID THIS NOTION OF PEER-TO-PEER COUNSELLING [OSISS] COME TO YOU? HOW DID YOUR INTEREST IN THAT COME UP?

Shortly after I got, quote unquote, 'cultural permission', I noticed how rapidly I started making sense of things. Now the images, the sounds, the feelings didn't change, but what did change is I started coping a little better. And daily, weekly, even today, these issues come back. You know, and it's like I guess a physical injury. Some injuries totally heal. Other physical injuries, you will have a bad back for the rest of your life or you know if you, if you have the misfortune of losing a limb, you might have a prosthesis, but it'll never be exactly the same, will it?

And I think for an OSI, for many of us you cope, you have a psychological prosthesis, but I don't think it'll ever be the same. And that's okay. And so coping allowed me to become a little more coherent, a little more cogent in the way I was thinking. And then I started to understand - I tried to understand why is this working for me now? Why is it I can cope and I couldn't cope last week? And it always went back to this cultural permission for me.

And then I started poking around. I started asking colleagues of mine that had been in Rwanda, and my own subordinates. And I had one driver, the poor kid, he had gone through hell after Rwanda. A couple of suicide attempts, and we kept in touch and I felt bad, oh my god, he's you know. And I was asking a lot of fellows what's keeping you alive? And then I started reading, obsessively reading, 24 hours a day, I was reading anything I could. And everything ended with a chapter on social support. If you were to randomly pick 20 picks on PTSD and war and trauma, there's always a paragraph in there that talks about social support and the importance of social support, and then the book ends. And it doesn't say what social support is, how do you provide that, what do you do, what do you not do? The do's and don'ts.

But I went back to my own experience and my understanding that it's when I got cultural permission and that level of support, that everything started working as an individual. So that's how the peer-to-peer thing started in my head.

And there was an incident out west where a corporal at the time, it was an incident out west and it was in the media quite profusely. And I remember saying I want to go see this corporal. I want to go talk to him because the idea had started to germinate in my mind. And I went there and I had it easy in my recovery, if we call it a recovery, because I was an officer. I was in on the combat arms at the time. I was more of a bureaucrat. And when I was having a bad day, I could walk away. I had a lot more permissions, a lot more latitude to take a break than perhaps the combat arms corporal.
And now this incident had brought to light -

WHAT WAS THE INCIDENT?

Well an individual out west who used his SUV - ransacked through a building in Edmonton. And I said I need to go talk to him because I've always wondered how it must feel for a combat arms corporal to have - because I had been in the combat arms. I knew that it's pretty regimented in the combat arms. So I wonder how it feels. And now I know there's a kid I know of who's got this problem, I want to talk to him. So I went to talk to him and within the span of a day, he had kind of corroborated all of my views about what I think we can do in addition to medical treatments.

And so I remember coming back from that trip on a flight and I wrote an email to a fairly senior person in the department. At the time he was ADMHR [Assistant Deputy Minister of Human Resources], a 3-star General, who had told me years before, Stéphane, if you ever have any ideas, why don't you run them by me? And I emailed him and that was the seed that was planted to start something new which was peer-based, focusing on social support, non-clinical in nature. And that was the beginning of that journey.

WHAT WAS THE REACTION? WHAT DID PEOPLE SAY TO YOU ABOUT THIS NOTION THAT YOU HAD ABOUT HOW TO TREAT THESE KIND OF INJURIES?

Well it was more how to support these injured soldiers rather than how to treat. I've always seen a very, not a wall, but a line between treatment, which is a clinical function, and the support function, which is a leadership function or a cultural function, a social function.

So for me, you know, of course up until then, there was no non-clinical initiative; there was no peer-based initiative in the department. So I'll be candid here, I'll admit to you that not a whole lot of clinicians lined up behind me to say I think this guy's got a good idea. Very few, in fact. And I don't blame them. Here's a guy with a mental health problem, according to their language - in my language, I was injured by stress - who's on the path of recovery and he wants to hire veterans who have traumatic stress disorder to help other veterans who have post traumatic stress disorder.

So in a lot of people's minds, I was wanting to hire blind people to help blind people cross a highway. And so I can't blame them for not lining up behind me. But I always maintain that my experience with soldiers in both my lives in the military, during my combat arms days and after, was that soldiers are so resilient. If you empower them, give them confidence in their abilities to do something, it's amazing what a soldier, a veteran can do. They're very, very resourceful people. Don't underestimate how resilient somebody can be if you empower them with self-confidence.

So all this said, a few good doctors lined up behind me and they said heh, this guy's got a good idea. And we started developing processes to avoid what the disaster scenario would be, you know, to veterans with posttraumatic stress disorder getting drunk in a bar because they don't have any boundaries. So we designed boundaries to the program, policies. A lot of training was developed. And within about 9-10 months, we held our first training course for four people. We started very small. And 6, 7, 8 years later, there's over 40 hired public servants now, who have a place in the government to do this.

YOU MUST BE VERY PROUD OF THAT?

Yeah.


YOU'VE HAD OBVIOUSLY SOME SUCCESS WITH OSISS. WHAT IS IT ABOUT THAT APPROACH THAT YOU THINK WORKS? WHY IS IT SUCCESSFUL?

Simplicity. And the fact that for a veteran or a soldier or a family or now, as you probably know, we have a bereavement support program which uses the same formula, it's the hope that you'll be at that stage at one point. Because mental health issues, operational stress injury, PTSD, depression is very isolating as a condition. You don't have dozens of people who want to visit you, because people don't know what to say. Very isolating. And that isolation leads to, according to some literature, to the worsening of the condition. So we know that social support in a sense can reverse that trend, can cause interaction between humans and that, increases your chances of recovery.

But when you realize that you're not alone, when you realize you can talk about somebody without talking and you get unconditional understanding, and when you realize that hey, if he or she can get to that point, I can get to that point. All of that is - are the ingredients, I think, that make it successful. And it doesn't have to be complicated.

Really, it's like bottled water. Social support happens whether we like it or not. And I think what the government realized, what General Couture realized at the time, he says - I remember our conversation in the very early stages. He said yeah, but why should we do this? I said because the guys are doing it anyways, but they're doing it all wrong. They don't have any boundaries. So what do they do? They get drunk. They fight. They play poker with their pills and that's not an anecdote, it's a real story. And then they go home with the wrong medication and they take the wrong pills and they don't feel too well. We need to put some boundaries to a very natural phenomena.

So we didn't invent anything here. There are other social support programs. I think what we did is we managed to find a way to do it within the Government of Canada framework and all the regulations and the policies that come with it.

So that is the magic, very simple formula. Don't reinvent the wheel; just make sure it's nice and round. And I think that's what's happening. Now, there's still a few spokes missing and it's not a perfect program, but we're still striving to get the perfect formula.

PEOPLE SAY THAT THE OSISS PROGRAM SAVES A LIFE A DAY; I'VE HEARD SOME PEOPLE SAY.

Wow. Credible people?

DO YOU SAVE LIVES, DO YOU THINK?

Oh yeah.

YEAH? YOU KNOW THAT? HOW DO YOU KNOW?

Well because I have had a chance to do that, or the misfortune, one of the two. And yeah, I don't think we save a life a day. I think that's an over-exaggeration because statistically, before OSISS, that would have been a lot of suicides. And yeah, we have a database and the database has been difficult to pin down recently. We have database problems. But it's in there. It's very real, you know.

I remember one particular day, again in the early stages of OSISS, getting a phone call from a mother, who is yelling on the phone. And she says, 'help, help.' And I said what's going on? And I knew this particular veteran and it's again very early stages of OSISS. We didn't have a lot of employees at the time. And she manages to tell me in a relatively cogent way that her son was in the back yard on the picnic table in the process of hanging himself.

And this kid knew me and you know, we had talked a few times over the phone and he had done stuff and he was in trouble with the law. And I always said, PTSD is not excuse, you know, pay the price, we'll support you, but you got to pay your dues. You know, this is mental health you can't do this kind of stuff.

But whether he would have hung himself that day, I wasn't there. But the mother was certainly worried. And I know that it, it works. Our employees get not those calls every day, but I would say on a regular basis. Now when we created OSISS that was not the purpose. There are boundaries around that and when we created the program, we knew we had to make sure our employees had the skills to deal with a crisis. But the danger is you don't want peer support staff to become crisis intervention people.

But what are you going to do when you get that kind of a call? You're going to say, well you know call 911, well eventually you're probably going to do that, but you're going to try something because there's not a whole lot of time. By the time the ambulance arrives or whatnot, the kid's gonna be swinging off the branch. So all this said, yeah, it saves lives. One a day? No, I don't think so.

OKAY.

But I'm very flattered that people think that.

BUT YOU KNOW, THERE ARE CRITICS WHO SAY THAT OKAY, LOOK, YOU KNOW, THESE PEOPLE ARE NOT CLINICIANS, THEY'RE NOT PSYCHIATRISTS, AS EMPATHETIC AS THEY MAY WELL BE, THEY DON'T HAVE THE SKILLS TO TRULY HELP IN THE WAY THAT THESE PEOPLE NEED HELP. WHAT DO YOU SAY TO THAT?

Were you ever at the bedside of somebody who's ill? Yeah? Did you have any formal training in healthcare - or maybe you did, I don't know. But sometimes the sheer presence of somebody is all somebody needs. And I don't think you need to be skilful for that. I don't think anybody can do this, and there's a selection process and we've failed a few times and we succeed most times.

But a lot of human beings, a lot of Canadian soldiers, family members, bereaved widows, bereaved fathers and mothers that are now in the bereavement program have that skill to be good to people, right? And that's all we're leveraging and we're putting structure around it.

When my father was dying of cancer, I did not have any medical training, but it was very comforting for him for me, for me to go and visit him. There wasn't a darn thing I could do clinically to save his life and he passed away. But when I was there, it was comforting. And I think we undervalue what that does to people and the hope it gives them for that moment or longitudinally perhaps. Who knows, right?

EVEN IF IT'S COMING FROM PEOPLE WHO ARE SUFFERING THEMSELVES?

Absolutely. The fact that you're suffering doesn't mean that you can't do anything anymore. People have this view that a soldier with post traumatic stress disorder or some other kind of operational stress injury is somebody who's a bit like Rambo, that you can't trust. That's going to go around killing people. And of course I think that - I'm not faulting the media, but if a soldier does something terrible tomorrow in Toronto, I think the media will mention that the person was a soldier. But if it was a baker, would we mention that he happens to work at Weston, making bread? But if he's a soldier who does something…

So we keep reinforcing that notion. But what I see is not that at all. I see a lot of good people in the hurt locker who want to get better and so on and so forth. And no, I don't think it's complicated at all. But it's not meant for everybody, you know. Not everybody could be a journalist, right? Not everybody could do the peer support stuff, yeah.

BUT THOSE WHO DO IT, WHO ARE ALSO IN THEIR OWN RECOVERY, ARE THEY POTENTIALLY DAMAGED BY DOING IT? I MEAN TO BE SURROUNDED BY ALL THAT TRAUMA, NOT ONLY THEIRS BUT EVERYONE ELSE'S NOW?

The theory is yes, and over the years, Dr. [Don] Richardson and the Veterans Affairs co-manager of the program have conducted research to establish whether or not the health of our employees would actually degrade over time as a result of doing this job.

Now I have not followed that research closely because that's a bit of a conflict of interest. But every time I see the results presented in forums, that is not the effect it's having. In fact, it's having - now I will not say that it's because of the program that the health of our employees is improving, generally speaking, right? But it is not deteriorating, as the popular prediction was. So I do think it's possible - I know it's possible. I know it's possible to put boundaries, self-care modules, self-care methodologies to make sure people understand okay, it's time to shut the cell phone off. I need to take care of myself now. And it's possible to train people to understand all of these and work within boundaries. And if you do that, then you're actually protecting your people's health. Doesn't work for everybody, but generally speaking it's working.

AND TELL THEM YOU CAN GO THIS FAR AND NO FURTHER, WHEN THEY'RE IN THE MIDDLE OF TRYING TO DEAL WITH SOMEBODY IN CRISIS?

That's right. Try to tell somebody who's got a heart, who's a good person, don't help this person anymore, very, very difficult. I'm not saying poor management here, not at all. But it's also very difficult for the individual to do that. So, but we have to look at the broad impact of the program. Broadly, it's working. Are there issues? Absolutely. Find an institution that doesn't have an issue.

AS THESE PEOPLE FIND THEIR WAY TO THE PROGRAM AND TALK ABOUT THE PROBLEMS THAT THEY'RE HAVING, WHAT ARE THE THINGS THAT COME UP MOST OFTEN? WHAT ARE THEIR COMPLAINTS ABOUT HOW THEY'RE BEING DEALT WITH BY THE SYSTEM? WHAT DO YOU HEAR?

From the client's perspective?

YEAH.

Well, stigma is something that comes up all the time, the way soldiers will be treated by so-and-so and the fact that mental health issues aren't understood, which results in stigma, which results in the person isolating and that's certainly a phenomenon.
The other phenomenon is you know, when people access care; one of the complaints is that it's very fragmented. And that I think is being addressed fairly robustly by the creation of central points of coordinated care, JPSU's [Joint Personnel Support Units]. So there's a one-stop shop now.

THAT'S GETTING BETTER, YOU THINK?

Well it's starting now. These centres are being created as we speak. And what it does is that yes, people are referred from Mrs. so-and-so to Mr. so-and-so to Dr. so-and-So-and-so on and so forth, but there's not 15 km between - it's all in the same building. So it's a lot easier to access and understand oh this is where I'm going now.

So that's certainly one, one issue. Transition issues. Transition issues between being a soldier in the military and releasing and then you know, having to access care in civilian healthcare when their entire lives they've been in the military and they don't even have an OHIP card for Ontario or a - And so those issues are issues.

THEY'RE DIAGNOSED, THEY'RE GETTING TREATMENT, AND YET INEVITABLY IT SEEMS TO THEM THE DIAGNOSIS LEADS TO GET OUT. DO YOU THINK THAT THE DISCHARGES THAT ARE HAPPENING BECAUSE OF PTSD ARE FAIR, ARE LEGITIMATE? IS THERE AN ISSUE THERE?

Certainly not for all. Certainly, and I, you know, I don't have an example in mind. But I would not sit here today and tell you that every single person who's getting a release from the Canadian Forces at this time with an OSI needs to be released. I think that that doesn't mean that everybody that has an OSI is getting released because more and more, people are still serving. More and more people are recovering. And more and more people are redeployed.

WITH OSI?

With OSI.

WITH PTSD?

With PTSD. Is that fact or fiction? It is fact. Now, are we at the point where we've eradicated stigma, have completely eliminated the wait lines at the clinics, completely succeed for every patient that comes into the clinics? They get 100% treatment compliance and they succeed in treatment? No.

But give me a condition in this country, be it cancer, diabetes, where there's 100% recovery rate, with treatment. I think that we have greater expectations from the Canadian military healthcare system when it comes to mental health than we do for the rest of all the provincial healthcare systems put together, and all the conditions together.

When my father, and he - this is fact - got misdiagnosed with bronchitis, and it was lung cancer, and three years later he was dying, it did not make the front page of the news. But if a soldier comes home from Afghanistan, has PTSD, goes to treatment and treatment fails or is not working or whatnot, for whatever the reason is - bad doctor, good doctor, bad compliance, good compliance. The soldier says hey, they're not taking care of me and it becomes a scandal. And I'm thinking, okay, maybe it is a scandal, but why was - but why do we expect the military healthcare system to succeed 100% of the time in one of the arguably most complicated mental health conditions to treat? I find it - I find it odd. And I'm not a doctor, I'm not defending myself, I'm not a doctor.

WELL AND I DON'T WANT TO MAKE YOU ACCOUNTABLE FOR THE ENTIRE MEDICAL -

No, no, I'm not offended by the way. I just find it bizarre.

BUT THERE ARE COMPLAINTS, AS YOU KNOW, AND ARE THEY LEGITIMATE? I MEAN ARE THESE ISSUES THAT THE REST OF CANADIAN SOCIETY SHOULD BE AWARE OF AND CONCERNED ABOUT AND TRYING TO FIX?

Of course. Of course. I'm not saying that people who complain don't have a right - not at all. What I'm suggesting is that when treatment failed me, I can clearly remember me not being treatment compliant, and I'm not saying that every soldier who's not doing well is not treatment compliant. But I do know of some cases where you got a broken leg, you got a cast, and the doctors say stay off the cast, use the crutches. And you decide to be a hotshot and you start walking on your cast. Then you go back to take off the cast, he says the bones didn't fuse well. My god, what have we done wrong? And you don't tell the doctor you haven't used your crutches. You're not treatment compliant.

Well in mental healthcare, it's a lot more complicated than that because there can be a million factors why you're not treatment compliant. You can be flushing those pills down the drain, you can be taking booze. So at the end of it all, I think that treatment success hinges on a bunch of factors, and fortunately or unfortunately, a lot of those factors have to do with the patient himself or herself. You gotta want to recover. And if some soldier's not recovering, I am not blaming that soldier. But you gotta work at it.

GIVEN THE AMOUNT OF MONEY THAT IS INVESTED IN TRAINING A SOLDIER, SHOULD MORE BE DONE TO TRY TO KEEP HIM WITHIN THE MILITARY FOLD WHEN HE COMES BACK INJURED?

Absolutely. Absolutely. And where we're starting - there's a lot of things being done right now, but this is my area. My area is to create that social climate in our culture, the leadership command climate that will allow barriers to care for mental health issues to be lowered, one day eradicate that stigma of ours because that's the number one issue, I believe, in my mind right now.

Because if you come back rapidly from a deployment, like Afghanistan, and you're not doing well and you're not going into care, you're not seeing a doctor, you're not reporting your symptoms and all this, you will develop coping mechanisms to deal with this on your own, and it'll work for a while. But at one point, it won't work anymore. That we know. It's a guarantee. So how do we make sure that our injured soldiers, for which we cannot see the injury, go into care? Well to me, it starts there. It starts with the culture, the social acceptance of the injury, the understanding of what to do, what not to do. And let's stop walking on eggshells.

It's okay to have an OSI, go into care. And what I'm happy to see more and more are young corporals with three years in the military, a tour in Afghanistan, within two months they're into the healthcare system. And a year later, they have a clean bill of health and they're back in battalion. And this is not a figment of my imagination. One was actually standing beside the CDS on the 25th of June when he launched his awareness campaign. He's a young kid. That's a success. Is it all - absolutely not. But that's what we're striving for.

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THAT CAMPAIGN THAT WAS LAUNCHED?

Well I think it's - well, I designed it, so I've got a bit of conflict of interest.

IS IT ENOUGH?

No, it's not enough. A campaign's never enough, right. A campaign is - to me it's a precipitating moment for the Canadian Forces. The campaign, the precipitating moment is the Chief of Defence Staff making this issue a leadership issue. Because in my days, when I led soldiers, you had a problem above the neckline, go see the doctor. I don't have anything that I can do to help. But we now know that yes, there are a lot of things I can do to help.

And so to me, the campaign's a precipitating moment and it's not only a moment, but it's a new philosophy and it gives us energy and fuel to keep moving in that direction of empowering leaders at every level. I don't care if you're a private or a colonel; you're a leader. You make decisions every day. You make the decision to stigmatize somebody and to be mean to somebody. I'm not talking about schoolyard mean here; I'm talking about stigma. And so that makes a difference.

WILL PEOPLE LISTEN? CAN YOU CHANGE A CULTURE JUST BY HAVING THE GUY AT THE TOP SAY WE WANT TO DO THINGS DIFFERENTLY NOW?

I think we can start changing behaviours. Then that'll morph into change some attitudes. That'll increase e social acceptance and understanding of the issue. And eventually, I don't know how long it takes to change culture. Maybe culture is unmovable. Maybe culture is too much of a big word. But certainly in a couple of generations, I think that the culture then will probably not be exactly what it is now. I don't think it'll ever be perfect because we have a lot of testosterone coming in the military at a young age. And you know, you were young, I was young. You're invincible, right?

And so, and we need that. That's fine. But yeah. And I'm not speaking for myself here, but our educators who are in the classroom with the corporals and the lieutenants and the officer cadets and the warrant officers constantly report to me that they're seeing the change by the questions, the dialogue in the classroom. And so I'm thinking all right, let's not lose the momentum though. This is not like - sustaining this to me is very important because I don't think you go to a lecture, talk about mental health for an hour, never talk about it again in your career and go check, he gets it.

To me, nurturing mental health awareness, education, is like going to the range. We send our soldiers to the range once or twice a year to keep those skills. Well, if we let gravity take a hold and we let time take a hold, we will forget how to be good to people and how to lead people with a mental health twist on it, right. So we need to sustain this. This is not a one-stop shop where you launch a campaign. And so what the CDS did is he created that precipitating moment, made a very hard-hitting leadership statement. But that campaign is sustained by an educational campaign in the classroom with the audience - with the people in the Canadian Forces. So that's really the campaign there.


CAN YOU HELP THEM BY TRYING TO DESENSITIZE THEM SO THAT IF WHEN THEY ENCOUNTER THE TRAUMA THEY WON'T BE AS STRESSED BY IT?

…actually this Fall , we are piloting some new pre-deployment training that was designed this summer that was based on two years of work in the Joint Speakers Bureau in the curriculum design in the new model and all this stuff. And the team I worked with did absolutely great work in making sure that they developed something relevant, not something that's academically inclined

AND THIS IS DESIGNED TO DO WHAT?

This is designed to deliver pre-deployment specific training. It's not an antidote to trauma. It's to prepare people psychologically a little more than we have in the past to face what they're going to face on a given deployment. And that's happening this Fall.

AND HOW DO YOU DO THAT?

Well, how do we do that? I mean one of the things that we believe are very important is to allow people to un-break the silence when they're not feeling good. We want leaders to get involved with their troops and understand it's okay to ask a soldier how're you doing and it's okay to deal with the answer, I'm not doing too good and empower the leader to know what to do about that not say, oh my God, he's not doing well, call a shrink in. No because there's something the leader can say on that moment that can help the person, right.

A bit like first aid for the mind perhaps. So as we roll this training out and this is fairly new, what we've done is we've looked at all sorts of training modalities out there from a NATO working group, from the United States Army, from the Marine Corps, programs here in Canada, and with a fairly robust group of advisors, clinicians, non-clinicians, experienced soldiers, we did create a Canadian model here and we're trying it this Fall. We're not using soldiers as guinea pigs but we took the best practices from everywhere and we've merged them into something that is in a language that soldiers can understand. And to double-check that we actually called soldiers in from Petawawa in Edmonton and force generators and ran it by them and Major Bailey and her team did all of that in the Summer and there we go, we're rolling this out.


I'M THINKING AS WE'RE TALKING ABOUT THESE 3 YOUNG MEN THAT I TOLD YOU ABOUT THAT WE'VE BEEN FOLLOWING IN THEIR LIVES AS THEY TRY TO COME TO TERMS WITH THEIR INJURY AND YOU KNOW I'M TRYING TO THINK OF THE COMMON THINGS THAT WE HAVE LEARNED FROM THEM IN TERMS OF HOW THEY FEEL THEY'VE BEEN TREATED BY THE SYSTEM. AND GRANTED THEY ARE ALL AT DIFFERENT STAGES OF THIS, BUT THE ONE THING THAT THEY ALL SEEM TO COME BACK TO IS, FOR ALL THE TALK OF CULTURAL CHANGE AND YOU KNOW HOW IT'S NOW OKAY AND LET'S GET RID OF THE STIGMA, WE CAN TALK ABOUT THIS, WE CAN NAME IT, WE CAN EMBRACE IT, WE CAN TRY TO FIX IT. ALL OF THEM HAVE TALKED ABOUT COMING UP AGAINST WHAT THEY SAY IS THE REALITY OF PEOPLE WHO DON'T UNDERSTAND, OF A MILITARY THAT ISN'T ALWAYS THERE FOR THEM AND DOESN'T GIVE THEM THE RESOURCES THAT THEY NEED, THAT MAKES IT DIFFICULT FOR THEM TO GET THE RESOUCES THEY NEED. HOW MUCH OF THIS STUFF HAS REALLY CHANGED? I MEAN I KNOW YOUR JOB IS TO CHANGE IT, BUT I MEAN WHEN YOU TAKE THAT STEP BACK, DO YOU THINK IT REALLY IS?

Well what you're saying there is a little discouraging, right. I'll admit that it's not what the goal of my work is. I mean the goal is to change things. So yeah, I don't know what to say about that. What I do know is that it ain't gonna change over night, that I do know it's going to take time and that saddens me, it saddens me a lot because you know, all I wish was for this whole issue to go away, not the issue that you have a reality to deal with but wouldn't I like to find that easy button, that easy button that you press and everybody understands and accepts these issues like they understand a broken leg, but I haven't found that easy button yet.

But I'm surrounded with people who will keep chomping at the bit and you know we have 40 odd accredited educators and as we do this interview I know that I have educators in Petawawa talking to a bunch of I think, artillery soldiers. Is that going to change everything in that unit? No. But my guess is that a couple of people from that class are going to go home tonight and they're going to reflect, oh jeez, maybe Corporal So-and-so is not a jerk after all. Maybe that's what his problem is, so instead of court- martialing him tomorrow, I'm going to take him out for a coffee. That's the effect I'm trying to have in a sense. It's a longitudinal approach.

And you know what? When we created the Joint Speaker Bureau, I managed it for awhile and when I used to open a course or whatnot, I used to remind everybody, manage your expectations here boys and girls because when you go into that classroom and if you have a 100 people, 30 people in the classroom, they get it, they do it right instinctively. 30 people will never get it, they're part of the problem, but there's that 30 people in the middle there, that will sway, will reflect and if we can just get them before they fall asleep that night, to say wait a minute here, I never saw it that way, god darn it. I'm going to treat Private So-and-so a little differently tomorrow when I go to the unit because now I have a little more insight. That's the effect.

So those 30 people, that 30 percent, whether it's 20, or 30 or 50, I don't know. But that third that I think will never get it until they release. You know what? Those are probably the people that your three cases are bumping into. I'm not saying that statistically that's what it is but yeah. Cause I do meet people that are supported. I'm dealing with a soldier in Shiloh right now, who I'm saying, is your chain of command supportive and he's saying yes sir absolutely. And I'm thinking, are you sure? Cause that's not what I normally hear. So is that the norm? No it's not.

I DON'T WANT TO MISLEAD YOU AND SAY THAT THEY FEEL TOTALLY UNSUPPORTED, BUT THEY HAVE EXPERIENCED THAT AS THEY'VE GONE THROUGH THIS PROCESS.

Listen a few weeks ago I wasn't feeling well. I wasn't feeling too well a few weeks ago, I hit a low, right, it happens. I got a little angry; I lost it for a while. I found my psychological prosthesis, screwed my head back on and now I'm back at work. While I wasn't feeling well I faced it.

WHAT DID YOU FACE?

I faced an eternal referral, from one to the next and you gotta come in and you gotta get this, you gotta, you know, you're not feeling well but you have to drive an hour to go get a little piece of paper to - and if you don't do that you'll be in trouble. And I'm thinking I ain't going. You know sometimes the system is hard to deal with. I went through it a few weeks ago, right. Now I think it's a little harder for the general population of Canadian Forces to stigmatize a Lieutenant Colonel, or an RSN or Chief Warrant Officer, but you know, I felt that a few weeks ago.

I got pretty angry, now I'm over it, I screwed my head back on. I'm okay now, but I have learned a few lessons. And I'm thinking, oh my God, if it happens to me, it's happening to a Corporal out there, right. And I don't think these people went out of their way to say, we'll make his life a misery. No, but I got, I got a taste of it myself, right.

AND WHAT DOES THAT TEACH YOU?

It teaches me that the works not done yet. It also teaches me that these people will remain nameless alright, but it also taught me, because I know these people, it taught me they didn't do that for any bad reason. They did not know how to deal with me, they did not know how to deal with my anger and they said all the wrong things.

And I remember speaking to, or hearing about and later confirmed, but anyways, this bereaved family lost, you know, a relative to the war in Afghanistan, received a letter from a very, very caring individual in our department. I know that person very well. He's the nicest guy on the planet. He wrote them a letter. He started the letter by saying words to the effect, 'I hope this letter finds you in good spirits'. Totally angered the family. Totally angered them, all right? So but what is the good Colonel going to say in that letter to open the letter, right. But the family was so insulted by the fact that the military would dare say, 'We hope this letter finds you in good spirits'. Of course I'm in bad spirits, I just lost my son, right. But then again did he do that - is that a faux pas, what is that, right?

IT'S UNFORTUNATE.

Exactly. Was it mean spirited? Absolutely not. So the taste I had, what I was tasting, the stigma a few weeks ago. It didn't taste right, it was pretty bitter. But now I look back and I say to myself, will you stop being so hard on people? People are at a loss, when you get all ticked off like that, they don't know how to deal with you so they start walking on eggshells and when you walk on eggshells you start tripping all over yourself. So I'm not brushing that off but I think that's a reality too. Another family would have received that letter and said isn't that kind, but that family sure didn't like that message. So how do you judge, I don't know. There's no universal solution.

THE OTHER THING THAT WE HAVE DISCOVERED, WE DIDN'T KNOW INITIALLY, BUT WE HAVE DISCOVERED WITH THESE THREE YOUNG MEN, IS THAT ALL OF THEM AT DIFFERENT POINTS TRIED TO COMMIT SUICIDE, CONTEMPLATED IT IN ALL THREE CASES MADE AN ATTEMPT AND I MEAN YOU'VE DEALT WITH SO MANY, YOU'VE GOT YOUR OWN EXPERIENCES, IS THIS THE REALITY THAT WE NEED TO UNDERSTAND ABOUT THIS DISEASE, IS THIS WHERE EVERYBODY GOES?

I don't think everybody goes there. But it's so sad because the public has, as I said earlier, the public has a view of a soldier affected by stress injury and PTSD as an angry person. Yeah there's anger, but for the most part they want to be in the dark and they want to be left alone. They just want to be left alone. And yeah, it's a reality, they just want to die you know and so I don't' think it's everybody. I don't think you or we should generalize but it's very true.

We take Canadians and we transform them into very, very high performing machines. I'm not saying that we're machines, but very, very high performing individuals and when you lose your mind, it's as if you lose everything, because it's your mind that motivates you to get up in the morning. Your legs actually allow you to perform that desire, but it's your mind that does that. When your mind stops culturing the desire to get up in the morning and to do something worthwhile, is a huge step down from where that soldier was.

So we gotta get to these people, anyway we can, we gotta get to these people and OSISS, the chain of command, I don't care who gets to these folks, somebody's got to get to these folks right, so the more the merrier.

IT'S BEEN 15 YEARS SINCE YOU WENT TO RWANDA AND ARE YOU STILL INJURED? DO YOU THINK YOU'LL ALWAYS BE?

I asked, I'll call him a shrink, I asked my doctor, my latest doctor who's in the military, that's a tough one, in the military you change doctors often. And of course none of us want to retell the story and all of this, but the last doctor I've had for awhile, a psychiatrist, I don't see him that often, but when treatment was pretty intense with him and trying with different medications a few years ago, I remember asking him, I said, doc I'm sick and tired of talking about this, I'm really tired hear, I've had it and I remember asking him, is this as good as it gets? Is this as good as it gets, like the movie and he looked at me and he said, you know what, yeah.

A lot of doctors you know, will say oh you can fully recover and all this and I haven't given up, I'm a happy guy you know, I - well I'm content, but I asked him and he answered the question right. He's a psychiatrist, as good or as bad as the next guy and I don't think that's giving up. I think you know, I can't speak for every soldier but I think soldiers are no bullshit type of people. Tell me what's going on here and tell me if this is as good as it gets, I need to turn the page, I need to accept this.

And when I'm on a good day, I'm on a good day and things are well. And if I'm on a bad day, I've got to remind myself I'll have another good day, right. And so coping is the key I think. How many people in society cope with stuff, right? Jeez, we're not the only people here. Everyday Canadians cope with stuff all the time right? So I find my comfort in the misery of others, there are people out there more miserable than I and they live their lives so I have a duty to live my life and be as productive as I can and I think soldiers may not be responsible for falling on the battlefield, but they're responsible to get up and keep living and prove them wrong.

That's what I say to soldiers all the time, prove those people who expect you to be violent, who expect you to get drunk, who expect you to be arrested because you did something stupid, prove them wrong. Live a good life; be good to your family, you know. Prove those people wrong, that will make us succeed with regards to stigma, right. So, I'm on a rant here right.

IT'S OKAY. SO YOU GET UP EACH DAY AND YOU TRY TO PROVE THEM WRONG?

Yeah. I don't think it's hard for most people to prove them wrong, cause as I said, most people I know just want to be left alone.

BUT I NEED TO TAKE YOU BACK TO THAT MOMENT WHEN YOU ASKED THE QUESTION OF THE DOCTOR AND HE SAID YEAH. HOW DO YOU PROCESS THAT?

I think I had concluded that on my own, I just needed to hear it from a professional who was qualified to tell me that because I know what I know but I don't know a lot of things so I'm a pretty pragmatic type of guy, you know. If you don't like me, just tell me and I'll stay out of your face. I don't need everybody to like me and you know I like to be honest and pragmatic and transparent. So no, I wasn't devastated or I think I had concluded that on my own over the nine years of therapy before, or treatment or whatnot.

TAKE A BIG STEP BACK FOR ME AND HELP ME WITH THIS THEN AND IF THAT IS THE NATURE OF THIS INJURY AND WHETHER STATISTICALLY THE NUMBER IS GREATER OR LESS THAN IT HAS BEEN HISTORICALLY, ONE WAY OR ANOTHER? YOU KNOW WE HAVE SENT A GENERATION OF YOUNG MEN AND WOMEN OFF TO AFGHANISTAN WHO ARE GOING TO BE COMING BACK AND 2011 IS GOING TO BE UPON US SOON ENOUGH AND WHAT IS GOING TO BE THE CUMULATIVE EFFECT OF THAT FOR OUR COUNTRY, FOR OUR SOCIETY?

From where I stand and I only have part of the picture and of course I have my opinions based on my experience, not the 12 years I spent on a school bench. And I think there's value in both opinions, right. I think it's fairly easy for any country to calculate the cost of a war, the cost of a mission in how much fuel we spend and how many airplanes we buy and how many bullets we fire down range and stuff like that. There's a human cost to this and I think we see the human cost every once in awhile when we are reminded during a ramp ceremony in Afghanistan, or whatnot, or you know, somebody dies in a crash. That's a palatable, measurable, tangible human cost.

But what you're doing now is looking into the other human cost right? And it's not tangible, it's not palatable and it's very hard to measure, that loss in quality of life, you know, does it really matter to Canadians that for every five good days, I have three bad days? Does that really matter? Because in a sense, and I'm not saying it doesn't, but should Canadians really be worried about that because I could have had a car accident three years ago and I'd have five good days and three bad days cause I don't like to drive on highways anymore.

I'm not minimizing the impact of wars on Canadian soldiers, 'cause that's not what I do, that's not how I get up in the morning and what motivates me to go to work, but there is a human cost. I paid some of the price, other people, very high profile people like General Dallaire's paid the price. There's countless others, there's the people in this documentary that've paid the price, but how do you measure that? How do you put a price tag to that? Of course there's health care costs associated to that. I know if some guy at 22 years old is on anti-depressants for the rest of his life and the health care system pays for that, well there's a cost there, fine.

I know the industry is trying to get a hold on health care costs for mental health, depression. We always go back to money. Why is it always the cost in money? What about quality of life? Having a happy person? That is immeasurable and I know what happiness feels like, cause I used to be happy, but now I'm glad and there's a big difference between being glad and happy. And I think that, that loss of quality of life is something the Canadian public needs to decide if it matters or not right. Does it matter that Corporal So-and-so is no longer happy? He can only touch glad.

You know some Vietnam veteran years ago told me, he says, what happened to me when I went through PTSD and I still do it today, he says my range of emotions went from a whole spectrum of emotion which includes, you know, all the adjectives in the dictionary and now I got three left, mad, sad and glad. And when he said that to me it hit hard because I said, you're right, you're right. I'm glad about a lot of things, I'm happy about nothing. And if you're crazy you don't remember what it's like to be happy, but I think veterans suffering from OSI, they do remember what happy feels like to some degree, but they can't touch that anymore right, they can't go there anymore.