A more balanced opinion on OSI

There's been a good deal of sensationalized reporting on Operational Stress Injury (OSI) - a condition that has been labeled everything from cowardice to shell shock to post-traumatic stress disorder over the past century - recently, so I must offer kudos to the Globe & Mail for taking such a balanced stance in an editorial today:

The Canadian Forces have made progress since they arrived in Kandahar a few years ago. They are struggling to cope with a wave of young Afghanistan vets who have served in an overtasked and under-strength military. The CF are learning; joint personnel support units, to help those suffering from PTSD, have been established across the country; decompression time in Cyprus is now built in to tours of duty; Independent military-family resource centres offer a variety of programs to family members. But progress is slow, waiting lists are long, and stigma is still very real.

The military still faces significant hurdles. Cultural change does not occur overnight. In spite of programs to increase understanding of PTSD, many soldiers maintain it is career suicide to admit to an operational stress injury. As long as that view remains, OSIs, which emerge primarily through self-reporting, will remain an insidious problem.

It is easy for civilians to judge the military harshly for failing to remedy this very serious problem more completely or quickly, but the reality is that Bay Street and Main street are hardly in a position to crow about their own compassionate treatment of the mentally ill.

The military deserve the very best in care; they risk their mental health just as much their physical health in the service of the nation. Stigma and skewed perceptions about OSIs must be overcome, because the cost of failing to do so is too high, with casualties on the home front among Canadian soldiers and their families.

That's just an excerpt - you should read the whole thing.

I'd like to reiterate what was said about pointing condemning fingers at the military. This problem is slipperier than a greased pig. You put ten soldiers on the line and shoot them, and all ten will have a hole punched in them by a bullet. It doesn't matter how strong or fit they are, whether they're male or female, what their age or family situation is, their skin will be pierced by the projectile fired at them. It's an objective wound, and there's no opportunity for second-guessing whether the bullet penetrated because of some personal shortfall of character.

But if you put the same ten soldiers into an inhumanly stressful combat situation, all ten will react differently. And it would be difficult to predict beforehand which will cope best. Unlike the bullet wound, OSI experiences can start with the same circumstances, but create completely different individual results.

Of course, just because it's such a complicated issue doesn't mean the CF gets a pass on dealing with it. As the editorial says, the soldiers deserve the best care we can offer them. But let's not fool ourselves either: we'll never completely solve this problem. We can only work harder and devote the appropriate resources to it in order to minimize both the frequency and severity of OSI incidents as much as possible.

The CF is taking some good steps, but there's a long and difficult road ahead.