Ensuring that our troops make it all the way home from military missions – mentally as well as physically – is the goal of a precedent-setting gift to the Queen’s-based Canadian Institute for Military and Veterans’ Health Research (CIMVHR) from one of the country’s leading defence electronics companies.
General Dynamics Canada has pledged $500,000 to help fund a research chair in military mental health at the Royal Ottawa Mental Health Centre and the new online data portal run by CIMVHR, the Journal for Military, Veteran and Family Health. The company’s donation will fuel research into the understanding, diagnosis, treatment and prevention of operational stress injuries (OSI) and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
“This donation sets a benchmark for industry participation in ensuring the health and wellbeing of our troops, veterans and their families,” says CIMVHR Director Dr. Alice Aiken, Professor of Rehabilitation Therapy at Queen’s and a veteran herself. “By joining forces with us, General Dynamics is demonstrating their commitment to playing a key role in this important initiative.”
With a network of more than 1,000 research experts at 37 university partners across Canada, CIMVHR is putting useful knowledge into the hands of those who work closely with serving military, veterans and their families, leading to improved awareness and understanding of their unique healthcare needs and the best ways to meet them. General Dynamics Canada is the first member of the defence industry community to actively support CIMVHR in realizing its vision.
“As Canada’s premier defence company, we develop technologies that help keep soldiers safe on the battlefield so they can return home to their families; this partnership is a natural extension of that mandate,” says Kelly Williams, senior director of strategy and government relations for General Dynamics Canada, and a former Commodore in the Royal Canadian Navy. “By aligning ourselves with expert researchers at CIMVHR and the Royal Ottawa, we hope not only to learn the causes and treatments of service-related emotional injuries, but ultimately how to reduce the risk of their occurrence.”
Many General Dynamics staff members across the country have military experience and firsthand knowledge of the effects that mental illness can have on Canadian Armed Forces personnel, their families and their communities, Mr. Williams notes. “The tragedy is that such illness can create chasms between individuals and their loved ones,” he says.
