Experts say Canadian military underplaying scope of mental injury

Experts say military underplaying scope of mental injury
The Star Post
By Chris Cobb
Postmedia News
July 3, 2013

A new Department of National Defence study that says 13.5 per cent of Canadian soldiers who served in Afghanistan returned home with mental illness severely underestimates the problem, say specialists in military mental health.

Of the soldiers who deployed, eight per cent have post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), says the study by David Boulos and Mark A. Zamorski titled Deployment-related Mental Disorders Among Canadian Forces Personnel Deployed in Support of the Mission in Afghanistan, 2001-2008.

The DND study, drawn from a pool of 30,513 troops who served in Afghanistan up to 2009 - two years before the final combat deployment ended - was published Tuesday in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.

But in the confusing numbers game surrounding posttraumatic stress and other war-induced mental injury, the DND study appears to undercut some of the department's previous estimates. The real number of mentally injured Afghan veterans is likely twice the number reported in the study, says retired Brig. Gen. Joe Sharpe, one of Canada's foremost authorities on operational stress injury in the Canadian Forces.
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