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Veterans and Mental Illness — How Canadian Study Unlocks Brain Mysteries – National

Tucked away in the basement of an unremarkable government building in Midtown Toronto, a group of talented international medical researchers operate in secret.

Or they like to joke.

“I think we were a little shy to share our success in Canada, at least compared to many sites in the US and around the world,” said Neil, director of the Center for Addiction and Mental Health Brain Imaging. Vasdev told Global News..

Notoriety aside, Vasdev and his team are conducting groundbreaking research linking repetitive concussion trauma to mental health. The key, they believe, is a disorder called chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) that was first discovered in the brains of dead NFL football players. I couldn’t, so there is no cure.

“Of course, that’s our goal,” he says. “We want to be the first center in the world to image his CTE in life.”

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Dr. Neil Vasdev

Dr. Neil Vasdev/Director, CAMH Brain Health Imaging Centre.

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To get there, Vasdev partnered with Project Enlist, a military-focused group operating under the umbrella of the Concussion Legacy Foundation. The purpose of Project Enlist is to get veterans to donate their brains. So far he has 250 veterans enrolled, but more are needed.

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“Almost all the data we get from CTE brains comes from American football players,” says Vasdev. “So we need to look at the population, such as the military population.”

“This is an incredibly serious problem,” said former CFL star Tim Fraiser, who founded the foundation in 2012.

“And it’s important that we start to put our attention and resources towards solving this problem,” he says.

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The question, says Fleiszer, is how the medical community has historically underestimated the role of brain injury in relation to mental health. The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke recently published a clear link between head trauma and his CTE. Doctors say CTE can lead to depression and other mental health problems.

Fraiser first became interested in the subject because of his own traumatic exposure to concussions in football and rugby.

He started working with concussion experts at Boston University to make life better for athletes. But when U.S. researchers dissected a veteran’s brain and found that nearly two-thirds of him were CTE-positive, he realized that the scope of the problem was much greater than he originally thought. I noticed

“And importantly, the brain is much more fragile than we think,” says Fraiser. “And the prevalence of these problems is much more widespread than we imagined.”

What they need is funding, now with a mix of Ontario government and private donors. Fleiszer says he asked the federal government for $12 million over three years, and the VA has shown interest, but has yet to write a check.

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Canada has more than 40,000 veterans who served during the war in Afghanistan, many of whom are now experiencing symptoms related to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

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Ryan Carey worked for the Royal Canadian Regiment (RCR) after leaving the CFL. He was never injured in combat, but once he left the unit, he was put on medication for injuries from operational stress.

“It certainly felt like for years that nothing was working and that I was following everything,” he says. I did, but nothing worked.”

He only got better when he considered all the trauma he inflicted on his brain, initially as a football player. He says they were joking. And in his 14 years of service, he participated in countless training sessions where he was exposed to massive concussion blasts.

You have a lot of head contact slash brains flying around in your skull,” he says.


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He was able to get off the meds when he started taking brain health seriously by focusing on exercise, nutrition, and sleep to boost cognition.

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When I joined Project Enlist, I learned that another RCR veteran was traveling around the country on his motorcycle and talking to veterans about PTSD.

When Michael Terry, like Carey, retired after 23 years in the military, he had a hard time. Early in his career, he was diagnosed with his PTSD, operational stress disorder, and major depressive disorder.

“To be honest, I was a mess,” he says. “At the time, the only thing I had in my life was the army. But I could no longer stay in the army. I had to leave. And I was probably on the verge of suicide.” would have been.”

Getting out on the road could have saved his life. This summer, he traveled his 33,000 kilometers and met with 620 veterans to talk about his PTSD. dispatchBut before speaking with Carey, he says he hadn’t considered the big picture that his symptoms could be the result of all the training he’s been doing over the years.

Veteran Michael Terry has crossed 33,000 kilometers across Canada on his bike in 2022.

Michael Terry

“I said, ‘Ryan, I’m a PTSD person,'” he says. Why do you keep telling me about this?

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He may not have suffered a concussion, but for years Terry served as an instructor at a shooting range, where he taught soldiers how to properly use the Carl Gustav 84 mm Recoilless Rifle. Each of his students may fire one or two of his anti-tank shells, but as an instructor he was exposed to up to 60 blasts in one of his sessions.

“It’s a lot like getting kicked in the stomach. I think that’s the best way to describe it,” he says. “It’s just a huge shock wave. You’re standing in the middle of it.”

Terry brushed off his displeasure and didn’t consider the long-term ramifications, much like Carey did during his years at the CFL.

“One of the big challenges is that as a member of the military, we are taught to actively fight discomfort and combat discomfort,” says Terry. “It’s a great tool in operations and in combat. Not so great when you get hurt later.”

Brain scan of a Canadian soldier showing increased tau protein, which may indicate the presence of CTE.

Courtesy of Shamantha Lora and Dr. Isabelle Boileau/CAMH Brain Imaging Center

Vasdev says the brain can only process so many concussion events. While it is not possible to say definitively that CTE can be diagnosed in the living brain, in unpublished images shared on Global News, the researcher used a radioactive tracer to determine the likelihood of him showing CTE in the living brain. A dramatic increase in some tau proteins can be shown. Years of blast exposure.

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This is a huge, perhaps groundbreaking step.

“We use a technique called positron emission tomography (PET) that detects radioactivity in specific areas of the brain,” he says. “And we can use this method to study all aspects of brain health disorders.”

In the meantime, Carey and Fraiser say they will continue to push for fundraising while Terry focuses on outreach to one veteran at a time.

“My biggest concern is the soldiers who think they’re okay, they think they’re okay,” says Carey. And one day they could fail. “



Veterans and Mental Illness — How Canadian Study Unlocks Brain Mysteries – National

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