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Cdn Medical Association Journal on OSI, Mental Health

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Part 1:  "Mental health in the military: a class where “stigma leaves the room” "
When Lt. Col. Stéphane Grenier returned to Canada in 1995 from a 10-month peacekeeping mission in Rwanda, he was as an injured man. He just didn’t know it.

He had been part of the UN forces, under Lt. Gen. Roméo D’Allaire, who were caught in the middle of the militia-led massacre of 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus. For four years after his return, Grenier suffered from cold sweats, flashbacks and emotional outbursts and sleepless nights. He says he once sat in his car for 45 minutes outside a base clinic, trying to figure out how he was going to describe what was going on in his head.

Looking back, Grenier realizes he was oblivious to anything related to mental health problems. Now, as special adviser on operational stress injuries for the Canadian Forces, he is leading an effort to educate Canadian soldiers about mental health, so they will be better equipped to recognize and seek help for invisible wounds, like the post-traumatic stress disorder he came home with 15 years ago.

“We sometimes see mental health as less important than it should be, because we don’t have the right language to describe it,” Grenier says.

Simply being made more aware of mental health issues is not enough, says Grenier. A pamphlet won’t cut it.

So he created a systemic educational campaign designed to reach military personnel of all ages and ranks and level of development. The goals are to educate soldiers about mental injuries, to reduce stigma surrounding mental health problems and to change attitudes about seeking help ....

Part 2:  "Veterans stepping forward for treatment of operational stress injuries"
Howie McGregor joined the army when he was 18 years old. He shipped out as a paratrooper before his 19th birthday and saw active duty for nearly 30 years.

When he wasn’t in combat, McGregor trained other paratroopers how to jump out of the bellies of bombers. Then he became a pilot, flying “gliders as big as planes.”

McGregor, 85, says it’s taken decades to admit that he may have lingering problems from his service days.

“I think I’ve got post traumatic stress disorder in spades,” he told a public seminar — Invisible Wounds: Recovery for Veterans and their Families — on operational stress injuries at the Royal Ottawa Mental Health Care Centre in Ottawa, Ontario, on Mar. 11. “And I need a lot of help,” added an emotionally distraught McGregor.

Dr. Michele Boivin, one of three psychologists who are part of a 10-member Royal Ottawa clinic for operational stress injuries, was encouraged by McGregor’s admission.

“We’ve actually had several veterans in the elderly age range who are now coming forward and I think that’s a combination of a lot of things,” Boivin says. “Certainly with the current conflicts in the news, that is making their experiences relevant for people again. Also our knowledge has really increased since the 1980s when PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder] became an official diagnosis . . . It’s really just in the past couple of decades that we’ve begun to understand more about what PTSD really is and how to go about treating it.”

The Royal Ottawa clinic is one of 10 across Canada funded by the Department of Veterans Affairs to offer help to both current and retired military personnel and Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers who have, or suspect they have, an operational stress injury ....

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