Opposition MPs and the unions representing the employees providing such services called on Defence Minister Peter MacKay to intervene and reverse the decision.
The Citizen broke the story on Wednesday that the Defence Department was cutting the jobs of medical professionals involved in suicide prevention and PTSD monitoring despite claims by DND and the Canadian Forces that dealing with such health issues is a priority.
Two unions have been informed by DND of the job cuts. DND has not commented on the cuts but sources confirmed the positions will be eliminated.
At the same time, the newspaper obtained an internal report for senior military officers at CFB Petawawa warning that emotionally-damaged Afghanistan war veterans at the base are being neglected by a mental health treatment system that is in “crisis.”
The report, obtained by the Citizen, was written a group of civilian clinicians who provide much of the care to hundreds of mentally ill soldiers from the base.
It describes a system that is poorly funded, devoid of forward planning, scrambling to provide even basic care and leaving mentally ill, often-suicidal soldiers waiting four months or more before a psychiatrist or psychologist is available to treat them.
The job cuts come on the heels of a new report indicating that suicides have increased in the Canadian Forces. At the same time, suicide and PTSD is under scrutiny at a military police complaints hearing in Ottawa. That hearing is examining how the Canadian Forces dealt with the case of Cpl. Stuart Langridge, an Afghanistan veteran who killed himself.
MacKay came under fire in the Commons on Thursday for the job cuts and the situation in Petawawa, but he dismissed such concerns. While he didn’t specifically address the issue of why DND was cutting the jobs, he said DND will be relocating a clinic to Petawawa to make sure soldiers and their families, as well as those in need of mental health counselling, will have closer and better access to that treatment.
“The Canadian Forces have increased the number of mental health services,” MacKay said in the Commons. “In fact, we now have over 378 full time mental health professionals. We are working to hire more, to double the overall number since taking office in 2006.”
DND has been dealing with ongoing problems convincing mental health specialists to relocate to Petawawa. Combined with a higher demand for services, this has resulted in lengthy waits for treatment. The Petawawa report also undercuts MacKay’s claims, pointing out that the military has not properly planned for the new clinic and states that the expertise to treat soldiers doesn’t exist at the base.
Union officials were informed Thursday the job cuts are proceeding but a last-minute appeal has been made to the Canadian Forces senior leadership to scuttle the plan. Union officials are not hopeful that will happen.
Liberal defence critic John McKay said the cuts could not come at a worse time and are “just plain wrong.”
He said Peter MacKay should intervene but he had no confidence the minister would act. “MacKay loves to wrap himself in the military flag, and as long as these guys are healthy and look like they can take on the world he’s happy to stand beside them,” said John McKay. “When they return and they have to transition to civilian life and they’re no longer deployable because of mental health issues, then he’s nowhere to be found.”
NDP defence critic Jack Harris accused the Conservative government of hypocrisy. “I think it’s outrageous this government uses ‘support the troops’ as part of its political mantra while at the same time ignoring their basic needs.”
He said MacKay is avoiding the problem and his restating of “government talking points” in the Commons “is not a proper response to a very serious complaint.”
Ottawa lawyer Michel Drapeau, who is representing the family of Cpl. Langridge at the military police complaints hearing, said the current DND system dealing with PTSD is overloaded. It can hardly keep up with the current demands let alone prepare for what some experts predict will be a “tsunami” of PTSD cases from veterans of the Bosnia and Afghan missions, he added.
“It is clear to me that reducing the DND PTSD health care workforce at this time is a form of abandonment,” the former Canadian Forces colonel stated. “Bluntly put, this goes against the sacred trust that both the nation and DND have to look after our injured soldiers.”
MacKay’s office also released a statement repeating some of the same points he made in the Commons. According to MacKay’s office, Canada has become a world leader in fighting the stigmatization and raising awareness of PTSD and other operational stress injuries.
“Care is provided through 38 primary care clinics and detachments and 26 mental health clinics across Canada,” it added.
Statistics released Monday by DND show that the number of suicides among Canadian Forces personnel increased last year. Twenty soldiers died of suicide in 2011 — 19 men and one woman, the department reported. Twelve soldiers, all of them men, took their lives in 2010.
The unions have been informed that the department’s Deployment Mental Health Research Section is being shut down, cutting four jobs, including those of suicide-prevention specialists. The employees also monitor PTSD rates and traumatic brain injury.
Eight of the 18 jobs in DND’s epidemiology section will also be cut. Those include epidemiologists and researchers who analyse mental health issues such as depression, PTSD, and suicide.
The unions say a trial program on injury prevention at Canadian Forces Base Valcartier will be closed because of the budget cuts.
The Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada and the Canadian Association of Professional Employees, the unions representing the workers, called on MacKay to put a halt to the cuts.
PIPSC president Gary Corbett said the “government’s decision to withdraw from this area of work is quite simply irresponsible. On behalf of all Canadians, we are calling on Minister MacKay to reverse this decision.”
The report obtained by the Citizen on the situation in Petawawa painted a picture of overworked medical staff, undermined by some medical officers who are skeptical about mental illness and who are having “a devastating impact on morale.”
The situation will now be compounded by the closing on July 1 of a satellite mental health clinic at the National Defence Health Services Centre at Smyth Road where currently, according to the report, two civilian psychologists are treating about 60 soldiers from Petawawa who have been diagnosed with PTSD.
Defence Department medical officers have confirmed to the Citizen that the two-year old satellite office is closing, but say the number of patients being treated at Smythe Road is closer to 40.
Within the Petawawa medical system, 158 soldiers are being treated for PTSD — the most serious of a myriad of mental illnesses and addictions that are, according to the report, rife at the base.
“When the satellite clinic closes, the crisis will get worse,” says the report. “The waiting lists will get longer, the stressors on the remaining staff will increase. Who will lose? The soldiers.”
DND has not commented on the job cuts. Department and Canadian Forces officials say suicide prevention and treatment of PTSD is a top concern.
Original Article
Source: ottawa citizen
Author: DAVID PUGLIESE AND CHRIS COBB
No comments:
Post a Comment