What is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)?
Historically, PTSD has been associated with military personnel and their reactions to traumatic experiences involving combat and warfare situations. More recently, PTSD has been linked to traumatic situations that don’t just affect soldiers. Paramedics, police officers, front-line nurses and victims of abuse, violent crimes or accidents have been known to develop symptoms.
According to the Canadian Mental Health Association, one in 10 people have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Symptoms of PTSD include reliving the traumatic event, emotional numbing and avoidance, and changes in sleeping patterns and alertness. Some experience severe psychological stress that can affect them long after the traumatic event, including flashbacks and nightmares or tuning out for periods of time, making it hard to live a normal life. According to expert Dr. Greg Passey, a retired military psychiatrist who treats veterans with PTSD, one in five people with PTSD attempt suicide.
How is PTSD treated?
Specialized treatment is required for Canadian veterans affected by PTSD. The majority of Canadian veterans affected face a difficult transition to normal life with few resources and supports available, and are generally required to compete for limited specialized medical services available to all Canadians.
While depression and anxiety can be treated with medication, therapy with mental health professionals can help, including:
• Group therapy.
• Exposure therapy, in which the person works through the trauma by reliving the experience under controlled conditions.
• Cognitive-behavioural therapy, which focuses on the way a person interprets and reacts to experience.
• Some people fully recover within six months, but it can take much longer. Cognitive-behavioural therapy appears to be the most effective treatment, according to research.
PTSD and Canada’s Veterans
In 2007, Veterans Affairs Canada calculated that the number of operational stress injury cases jumped by more than 400-500 percent over the previous five years.
In a December 2008 report, Pat Stogran, the Ombudsman for National Defence and the Canadian Forces, found a number of individual cases where military members and/or their families were not treated fairly by the Canadian Forces or did not get access to the care and treatment that they needed from Veterans Affairs.
Most notably, Ombudsman investigators found that 18 of 31 recommendations from their 2002 report have not been fully implemented, particularly those dealing with broader issues of leadership, governance, data collection and monitoring.
The Ombudsman stated that this has hampered the overall coordination of efforts and consistency of care received by military members across the country suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder or other operational stress injuries. The Ombudsman also noted a number of complaints received by the Office are in regards to Veterans Affairs Canada staff not understanding the problems faced by people dealing with operational stress injuries.
The report recommended further steps be taken, including:
• Create a full-time operational stress injury coordinator responsible for all related issues, including the quality and consistency of care, diagnosis and treatment, as well as training and education.
• Develop a database of Canadian Forces personnel — both regular and reserve forces — affected by stress-related injuries.
• Conduct an independent and confidential mental-health survey of Forces personnel.
