Post-War Mental Health Issues

I saw an interview yesterday on TV with a soldier back from Afghanistan who is suffering terribly from post-traumatic stress syndrome and his mother who was trying to get his commanding officer to understand her son needed mental health care. I don't know whether there are adequate resources in the armed forces to deal with post-war mental health issues, but from the interview, I understand that there is still room for improvement where understanding among some commanding officers is involved.

There is still a stigma with mental illness in society, let alone the military where part of the traditional image of a soldier is not to show weakness or emotion.

From the Wednesday, October 17, 2007, Comment section, page AA6, is an edited version of an editorial that originally appeared in The Gazette, Montreal, Quebec, Canada:

Worth Repeating
HELPING SOLDIERS COPE WITH WAR

After World War II, medical professionals and others began to understand fully, for the first time, the toll that combat takes on soldiers, sailors and airmen.

Comprehensive statistics and a better understanding of mental-health issues brought out, in the post-war years, a reality that had been only poorly understood after World War I: Prolonged exposure to the risks and realities of organized bloodshed can cause psychological problems that can linger for a lifetime, just like the loss of a limb.

Many Canadians never came home from World War II, and some came home injured. But many others strode off the troopships healthy in body but damaged or vulnerable psychologically. Post-war, a disproportionate number of veterans - and their families - suffered from alcoholism, depression and the like, or committed suicide.

Now we are reminded that while much has changed in our society since then, the stress of warfare has not. New Canadian Forces statistics suggest that many of our Afghanistan veterans say they are enduring depression, the package of symptoms known as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or other problems.

The survey was conducted among some 4,700 Canadian Forces personnel who have served in the Kandahar area, polled between three and six months after coming home.

The findings were distressing: Of the 2,500 who responded, 15 per cent indicated they had to deal with one or more problems such as PTSD and depression; some reported panic attacks and suicidal tendencies.

The government has a responsibility to make sure that veterans can get the medical help they need to cope with their invisible wounds.

Fortunately, that does not seem to be happening. The defence department boasts of "robust measures" to help veterans, including pre-deployment preparation, in-theatre access to chaplains, psychiatrists and social workers, and attentive monitoring once vets get home.

That's all good. The costs of war are more than deaths and wounds and money; war is hard on all those who fight it.

As long as there are worse things than war, however, we must sometimes be prepared as a country to pay the price. But where money and attentive care can reduce the human toll, we owe it to our soldiers to do all we can.

This is an edited version of an editorial in The Gazette, Montreal, yesterday.