'Send up the Count' offers mental health, crisis support
By Steph Crosier, Kingston Whig-Standard
Friday, June 5, 2015 8:23:31 EDT PM
Brian Harding, corporal at the time, during a convoy run to the remote Canadian outpost of Strong Point Pegasus, Kandahar Afghanistan on Friday February 6, 2009. Supplied Photo
Kelly Scales knows what she witnessed while deployed in Afghanistan will stay with her forever. She hopes the memories will fade, and the nightmares will dissipate, but, in the meantime, Scales has her faithful chihuahua, Penelope, to care for her and the Facebook group "Send up the Count" to support her.
Scales was a clerk in the Canadian Forces for 19 years before she was medically released for post-traumatic stress disorder and neck injuries in 2011. Sitting in the shade of her back deck Thursday, with Penelope on her lap to calm her nerves, the 42-year-old from Kingston told the Whig-Standard she joined the Forces' reserves at 19 in April 1992.
"I was still in high school when I joined," Scales said. "It was always something I wanted to do. I don't know why -- no one in my family was in the military."
As a clerk, Scales was deployed to Bosnia, Canadian Forces Station Alert, and completed two tours in Afghanistan. During the latter, Scales witnessed situations that remain difficult to talk about even to this day.
"I saw some things ...," Scales said. "Came into some dangerous situations."
She said the PTSD started during her first tour to Afghanistan, but during her time there she was too busy to focus on it. Finishing her second tour to Afghanistan in 2005, Scales returned to Canadian Forces Base Petawawa, where she was posted at the time. Getting into a routine, vicious symptoms of her PTSD emerged. Seeking help, Scales went to the base psychologist for treatment.
"You have to be ready; I don't think I really was at that time," Scales said. "At that time, it was just talk therapy. They gave me a lot of tips and hints. Got me into guided imagery, muscle relaxation, things like that.
"The breathing exercises, that helped when anxiety attacks started to come on."
Eventually, Scales was posted back home to Kingston, but she wasn't the same. Though the exercises and talking helped, she had changed as a person and as a leader in her unit.
"I started to get really anxious again, and I started telling people off, jacking people up," Scales said. "Never for no reason. If someone was rude to one of my clerks out into the hall they went.
"But that's not me, so it was at that point where I knew I had to take a step back and I went on sick leave."
In addition to her PTSD, Scales went on sick leave to undergo two spine surgeries following a training incident, and two surgeries on both her knees. The combination of mental and physical injuries eventually led to her medical release in 2011.
Since her release, Scales hasn't been able to work, but has volunteered with the Operational Stress Injury Social Support program helping others dealing with PTSD. Though she had to stop voluteering with the program for personal reasons, she soon discovered the Facebook group "Send up the Count."
"I think somebody added me right after it first started, and I thought it was fantastic," Scales said. "Just the whole purpose because it. So I joined, and invited a whole bunch of other people."
Send up the Count, named after a patrol drill that ensures all troops are accounted for, was created in November 2013 by infantry reservist Brian Harding, Jordan Irvine and Dan McInnis, along with three other administrators. The men started the group after there were four Forces member suicides in a span of just a few months.
"The primary mission when it all started was let's stop dudes from killing themselves," Harding said from the Yukon. "The idea was, hey, once in a while you call old buddies you used to serve with and say, 'Hey, how are you doing? No really, how are you doing?'"
Harding started his military career in Kingston as an infantry reservist in the Princess of Wales' Own Regiment in February 2004. He studied criminology and criminal justice at the University of Ottawa, taking a hiatus in 2007 to complete workup training in preparation to deploy to Kandahar, Afghanistan, in 2008. Completing a six-month tour in convoy escorting and base security, Harding was promoted to master corporal. He graduated from Ottawa in 2011, worked full time at his regiment and was promoted to sergeant in August 2011 as an operations and training NCO.
Harding, now a police officer, said that though there is a bevy of civilian and military resources to help with mental illness, there are still people falling through the cracks, not asking for help.
"There are some things where anyone can help, and well, we're anybody, let's see what we can do," Harding said.
Currently there are 9,510 members in the group that is closed to only serving military members, veterans and immediate family of those serving or who have served. Heavily supervised to avoid conflict, the group features posts as raw as: "Some one give me a call," followed by a phone number.
"We've had people post what appeared to have been a last message suicide note," Harding said. "We've had a few instances where as a result of the members of the group getting in touch with each other, within minutes we've had people identify a problem, start contacting each other and (it) has resulted in several occasions (of) police and paramedics locating somebody in time before they ended their own life."
Harding said those posts only come every few months, but because there are so many people from across all time zones in Canada, someone is almost always online to help.
"We can reach people anywhere at any time of day. It's awesome," Harding said. "It's so friggin' easy and fast because it's on Facebook."
The only aspect of the group that leads to hesitation is that it is composed of military members of all ranks, up and down the chain of command.
"Most people get it," Harding said. "In the infrequent instances where people say something that might be problematic, usually people are cognizant that; OK this person is having trouble, they don't need to be hammered on, they need to be helped."
In addition to connecting "brothers and sisters" in need, the group lists numerous formal resources such as mental health and veterans crisis lines. The group also introduces members to additional informal groups, including the 33 CBG (Canadian Brigade Group) Wellness Group.
Started by David Munroe in the fall of 2014, the group also brings serving members, veterans and also police officers, EMS, RCMP and firefighters together for peer support.
Munroe joined the Armoured Corp. in 1984. During his career, he deployed to Cyprus, Cambodia, and twice to Bosnia. Munroe retired as a sergeant in 2007, became a part-time reservist, and is now the Ontario Regiment's regimental sergeant-major in Oshawa. During the day, Munroe works as a logistics co-ordinator for the Canada Training Group.
Munroe saw that 31 and 32 brigades had wellness groups already, and since 33 brigade covers most of Ontario, he thought it was important to start. With more than 400 members, the group is growing. The conversation on the group is good, but Munroe has also provided his phone number so members can contact him directly.
"We've had a few instances where we've had to react and make sure this guy, or whoever, wasn't going to hurt themselves. We call the police and get them to a hospital and get them looked at, and go from there," Munroe said. "Sometimes they just need someone to talk to."
Munroe recalls a member in CFB Petawawa who asked Munroe to call his friend. Calling him up from Pickering, the person in Petawawa said they'd been drinking and had guns. Staying on the line, Munroe contacted the Military Police and the Ontario Provincial Police to get help to the person as quickly as possible.
"We don't do this kind of work because we want recognition," Munroe said. "We do it because it is the right thing to do, helping other soldiers."
When it is too late and Munroe hears of a soldier or veteran committing suicide, he admits he cries.
"Especially if I know them, or have served with people who knew them," Munroe said. "It really hits home, and I ask: 'what else could we have done?' Then you come to the realization that you've done everything you could. It's up to that person to want to make the commitment to either get better or end it.
"There's only so much you can do, and once you realize that ... the pain doesn't go away, but it becomes less, knowing you've done everything you can."
Munroe said the perspective of mental health in the military has changed a lot for the better.
"Back in the dark days, the dinosaur days, whatever you want to call it, you were sick, lame and lazy," Munroe said. "Now we encourage our soldiers: you know you get hurt, you get help.
"Like I tell my guys, a broken brain and a broken leg are the same thing, they can be fixed. You break you leg, it's never going to be as strong as before you broke it. You break your brain, you get PTSD or an operational stress injury, it can be fixed, but you're not going to be the same."
steph.crosier@sunmedia.ca
Twitter.com/StephattheWhig
