Military veteran charged following incident at Wainwright

[Jarnhamar]

Whoever writes those incessant CF wide emails should put out a simple Mental health related email something like this;


What do you feel are the 3 biggest issues causing mental health issues with CF members?
What are 3 biggest issues you're facing which cause you stress in the CF?


Instead of paying some university thousands of dollars to do a study just task someone/some members (hey someone from JPSU) with compiling the responses and come up with a fancy graph.

 

[brihard]

There's some merit to that. While the plural of 'anecdote' is never 'data', it's not necessary to achieve scientific degrees of academic rigour in order to shape and evolve attitudes.

With that same anecdotes =/= data caveat, anecdotally in my work with Send Up The Count I and the others I work with talk with a lot of people about a lot of issues. Some of the major ones that come up frequently, in no specific order:

1. Pre release worries. Jobs in particular, but also continuity of medical care and treatment. When a release is going to be medical in nature these concerns are amplified.

2. "Sidelining" by virtue of injury. Guys who suffer injuries in training/operations and who abruptly find a good career off the rails. If it's anything but a 'clean, quick heal' and back into the section, a lot of guys feel that they are suddenly cut out of feeling like real soldiers if an injury results in PCAT or long TCAT.

3. A massive stigma around mental health. Normal mental health issues - the sort of anxiety, depress, etc that can hit absolutely anybody - simply aren't accepted as normal, recoverable things. As soon as someone is dealing with any mental health issue they may as well have leprosy- people automatically think worst case and assume buddy's on his way out. This is exacerbated by leadership who will say the official Right Things To Say, but then immediately assume a locker room mentality when behind closed doors with the rest of the leadership- Cpl so-and-so, who's been a solid soldier for years and tours, is suddenly a weak sack of crap because something misfired cognitively and he needs to get the right help to work through it. Consequently, guys aren't seeking the early interventions that have the best chance of recovery. We've got guys admitting past suicide attempts to us that nobody ever heard of, and they still have active symptoms of anxiety and depression that they're afraid to get help for. This is I think the single most destructive factor from which most others stem.

4. A belief that mental health overwhelmingly carries a negative prognosis. As soon as you admit mental health issues, you're hooped.

5. Addictions. Holy frig- alcohol... Self-medication with alcohol turns routine, treatable depression/anxiety into suicide attempts, domestic assaults, and DUIs. I see this in my civilian employment too.

6. Normal life stressors that the military manages to make worse. Things like families separated by postings, and then buddy's plans to go see the family for daughter's birthday get completely screwed up because he catches extras over the weekend for forgetting a piece of kit on exercise. A lot of arbitrary uses of power unique to the military have considerable unanticipated effects on the family relationships whose healthy maintenance is key to a person maintaining life balance when the uniform comes off. Lots of other stuff- grief for loss, things like that - are buried because of the 'either you're 'well' and you soldier on, or you're 'unwell' and therefore junk' thing that we have going. Yes, this is a similar stigma to outside the military, absolutely. I personally think that for all the traumatic experiences the military has, we should be seeking to exceed the degree to which the rest of society deals positively with people who are experiencing and hoping to recover from these issues.

I am thoroughly convinced that leadership attitudes at the levels directly affecting the troops need to change to recognize mental health issues as being fundamentally little different from injuries - they can happen to anyone, they don't speak to a person's worth as a soldier or an individual, and there should be an expectation of recovery, promotion thereof, and continued inclusion of the person in the team as much as possible so they don't feel cut out. Leadership who say one thing in public and are known to say another behind closed doors are toxic.

This does not mean that there is a solution to every case and that every person will be able to get better. Some people get sick or injured in ways that unavoidably lead to release. Some people have enough go wrong in their heads that ugly things happen and nothing could really have been done to forsee it. But there's a delta right now between 'what is' and 'what could be'. A broad one. As TCCC has helped us minimize preventable battlefield deaths by equipping just about everyone with core lifesaving skills, there are easily teachable core attitudes that will save us great issues steming form mental health.

That's just my two cents as a layperson who's become fairly involved with this.

 

[OldSolduer]

Have any of you seen The Road to Mental Readiness training?

When I mentioned it to my peer group most gave me the deer in the headlights look.

 

[JesseWZ]

IIRC, a ret'd mbr is still accountable under the CSD for offences that happened while he/she was serving.

Yep.

 

[brihard]

Have any of you seen The Road to Mental Readiness training?

When I mentioned it to my peer group most gave me the deer in the headlights look.

I did a two day R2MR in Kingston with a crew from Joint Speakers Bureau. It was excellent training, but deals more with prevention and resilience. I also think the CF should be offering the Mental Health First Aid that the Canadian Mental Health Association runs.

 

[OldSolduer]

I did a two day R2MR in Kingston with a crew from Joint Speakers Bureau. It was excellent training, but deals more with prevention and resilience. I also think the CF should be offering the Mental Health First Aid that the Canadian Mental Health Association runs.

Agreed, but prevention is key. Much like you can train your body you can also train the mind.

 

[Cansky]

I did a two day R2MR in Kingston with a crew from Joint Speakers Bureau. It was excellent training, but deals more with prevention and resilience. I also think the CF should be offering the Mental Health First Aid that the Canadian Mental Health Association runs.

Yes R2MR is good training and as a Physician Assistant I agree that Mental Health First Aid should be taught too.  However getting anyone to attend these course will be very difficult.  Heck we can't get most folks to do annual IBTS training every year or First aid on a regular basis.  R2MR is run by the PSP staff and as far as I know was suppose to be done annual by all CF members.

 

[Jarnhamar]

Yes R2MR is good training and as a Physician Assistant I agree that Mental Health First Aid should be taught too.  However getting anyone to attend these course will be very difficult.  Heck we can't get most folks to do annual IBTS training every year or First aid on a regular basis.  R2MR is run by the PSP staff and as far as I know was suppose to be done annual by all CF members.

I've did a couple PSP workshops/courses on that stuff.

The yearly IBTS training isn't very effective.  The last one I went to it was a weirdo socially awkward PSP lady giving a company + the brief. One of her speeches was about family violence where she told us all men are inherently abusive  :
The yearly briefs are done right before leave with a check in the box atmosphere. No one wanted to be there and no one cared.

The courses were marginally better but it seemed like 60%-70% of the people attending where there just to vent about themselves and all the issues they were going through, I've never been to an AA meeting but I can imagine that's what one would feel like.

 

[daftandbarmy]

Yes R2MR is good training and as a Physician Assistant I agree that Mental Health First Aid should be taught too.  However getting anyone to attend these course will be very difficult.  Heck we can't get most folks to do annual IBTS training every year or First aid on a regular basis.  R2MR is run by the PSP staff and as far as I know was suppose to be done annual by all CF members.

Unfortunately, once the shooting stops the profile of these types of issues plummets with both the civilian and military communities. Sassoon pegged it ....

Suicide in the trenches:

I knew a simple soldier boy
Who grinned at life in empty joy,
Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,
And whistled early with the lark.

In winter trenches, cowed and glum
With crumps and lice and lack of rum,
He put a bullet through his brain.
No one spoke of him again.

You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye
Who cheer when soldier lads march by,
Sneak home and pray you'll never know
The hell where youth and laughter go.

― Siegfried Sassoon, The War Poems

http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~keith/poems/suicide.html

 

[OldSolduer]

The yearly briefs are done right before leave with a check in the box atmosphere. No one wanted to be there and no one cared.

That is completely the wrong time to do them. It's only because leadership, including me, haven't thought this through and separated the wheat and the chaff.

The serious stuff - mental health etc, gets lumped into one day with the annual security brief, thou shall not use alcohol too much brief, plus the briefing from the cleaners etc. It's more convenient that way - easier to book classrooms etc.