Safely in Our Hands:  Helping Our Helpers Stay Healthy

2010 Conference

September 29th - October 3rd, 2010.

Confirmed Speakers Include:

 

Lieutenant Colonel S. Grenier MSC, CD

Lieutenant Colonel (LCol) Stephane Grenier joined the military in 1983. He has served in several missions abroad, most notably nine months in Rwanda in 1994/95 and Kandahar, Afghanistan in 2007. He was also deployed for much shorter periods of time and has travelled to many regions of the globe including: Cambodia, Kuwait, the Arabian Gulf, Lebanon, Haiti, Norway and the Czech Republic, to name a few.

Faced with his own undiagnosed PTSD upon return from Rwanda, he took a personal interest in the way the Canadian Forces was dealing with mental health issues. In 2001 he coined the term Operational Stress Injury (OSI) and conceived, developed implemented and managed a government based national peer-support program for the Canadian military named the Operational Stress Injury Social Support (OSISS) Program. Today OSISS is a highly successful program that delivers peer support to CF personnel, Veterans and their families affected by mental health issues, and assists those who have suffered the loss of a loved one through a Bereavement Support Program.

In 2007 LCol Grenier was named the Operational Stress Injury Special Advisor to the Chief of Military Personnel and entrusted with the task of creating a Canadian Forces-wide work place, mental health education program. His work led to the launch of a second highly successful non clinical mental health program within the Canadian Forces named the Mental Health & Operational Stress Injury Joint Speakers Bureau. The Joint Speakers Bureau, now in its third year of operation, has clearly demonstrated through robust performance indicators that it is one of the most significant prevention initiatives introduced in the Canadian Forces. The Joint Speakers Bureau is recognised as having fostered organizational and attitudinal change regarding mental health within the Canadian Forces.

In 2009, LCol Grenier conceived a corporate mental health awareness campaign that was launched nationally by the Canadian Forces Chief of Defence Staff. The campaign was recognised and later endorsed by the Mental Health Commission of Canada, the Canadian Mental Health Association, and the Canadian Alliance on Mental Illness and Mental Health as an example of corporate leadership in reducing the stigma that is often associated with mental health illnesses.

He has been awarded a Meritorious Service Cross by the Governor General of Canada for taking the concept of peer support and driving it from the grass-roots up into a formal federal government program. In 2009 he was awarded a national Champion of Mental Health Award by the Canadian Alliance on Mental Illness and Mental Health. LCol Grenier is also a member of the Workforce Advisory Committee of the Mental Health Commission of Canada.

 

Dr. Angie Panos is a licensed psychologist with over 20 years specializing in the treatment of traumatic stress. She is currently the director of the Crisis Response Program for Intermountain Health Care. She is a member of the International Society of Traumatic Stress Studies. She has consulted internationally to organizations affected by effects of violence and trauma. She assisted the government of Kuwait in the planning and implementation of the postwar recovery efforts, including rape recovery, crisis mental health services as well as community education. These efforts won her recognition and an award from the Crown Prince of Kuwait.

Dr. Panos has presented worldwide to organizations regarding trauma, including the United Nations World Congress on the Family. She has consulted with over 100 different organizations nationally to assist them in dealing with murder, suicide or traumatic death in the workplace. She has directed the response to major traumas, including airline crashes. She is on the Board of Directors for Gift From Within (giftfromwithin.org), an international non-profit organization that provides support, referral, and educational/resource materials for trauma survivors. She is also on the Board of Directors for the International Center for Child and Family Resiliency, an international non-profit organization that supports research and education for victims of trauma, such as war refugees and street children.

She received the Association of Marriage and Family Therapists Special Recognition for Meritorious Service (1991) for her working in directing the recovery efforts with the hostages and witnesses of homicide of the Altaview Hostage Siege. Dr. Panos has 17 peer-reviewed publications in the trauma field including a landmark study on. a 10-year follow-up study to an incident of workplace violence. (2004. Journal of Emotional Abuse, 4(3/4).