Canadian Forces veteran Shane Nedohin laughs with his wife Jessica Nedohin and neighbour Steven Kurz on Nedohin's farm near Fairview, Alta. on Oct. 14. After 22 years as a JTF2 soldier, who served four tours in Iraq as well as Afghanistan, Mr. Nedohin has suffered a cumulative brain injuries through repeated concussions but says Veterans Affairs has repeatedly denied his claims for supports.Amber Bracken/The Globe and Mail
Veterans Affairs Canada must speed up its review of the latest medical research on how blast exposures injure soldiers’ brains, a former top Canadian soldier says, joining concussion advocates who are calling for the benefits system to accommodate such disabilities.
Retired major-general Denis Thompson, the former commander of Canadian Special Operations Forces, said the military has become more aware of how shockwaves from the guns they fire, explosions they survive or even just the training they undergo before they deploy can damage soldiers’ brains.
The veterans’ benefits system needs to improve for soldiers who served before so much was known about head trauma, he said.
“We owe them that much as a minimum, for the service that they gave us while we were still operating basically in the darkness about concussions,” Mr. Thompson told a Thursday news conference.
The event in Ottawa was organized by charity Concussion Legacy Foundation (CLF) Canada, which featured the story of retired master-corporal Shane Nedohin. His 22 years of military service include years with the elite Joint Task Force 2 team, where he worked as a breacher – a role where all manner of force is used to try and clear a path for soldiers to follow.
He was medically released from the military after what he described as “insidious” symptoms began to pile up, including violent mood swings, confusion and black outs, which emerging research suggests could all be linked to continuing exposures to blasts.
But his efforts to have that recognized by Veterans Affairs Canada are so far for naught, with the government telling him in a letter earlier this year that “repetitive exposure to blast injuries” isn’t supported in expert medical literature as leading to cognitive decline, and that his application for disability benefits for a traumatic brain injury was being placed on hold.
He does receive disability benefits for other conditions, including physical injuries and post traumatic stress disorder.
Since 2019, 529 applications for benefits for traumatic brain injury have been placed on hold pending more medical information, Veterans Affairs Canada said in an e-mailed statement. The claims can always be reactivated if that information surfaces, and veterans could receive up to three years of back pay on benefits if it is accepted.
Each case is different, said Carolyn Hughes, the director of veterans services at the Royal Canadian Legion. She urged veterans with pending claims to appeal – and for the government to act.
“The research that has been done by our allies needs to be adopted by Veterans Affairs much faster,” she said. “It does save lives.”
When asked how it reached the conclusion presented to Mr. Nedohin, the department would not comment directly on his case. It pointed The Globe and Mail to a bibliography of studies reviewed in 2023, as well as a more recent review this March.
But concussion research experts say there are reams of current studies that do support a link. Dr. Samantha Bureau, senior director of international research at the Concussion Legacy Foundation, pointed as an example to a 2023 American study of around 860,000 veterans. It concluded that those who had a traumatic brain injury were significantly more likely to have new mental health conditions.
She said another way the field is starting to catch up is how scientists even talk about the injuries they are studying, and that that complicates the issue.
“There’s not a lot of consensus on these names for these things that we’re saying, so then we have all this literature that’s out there under concussion, mTBI [mild traumatic brain injury], traumatic brain injury, blast exposure, blast injury, when in reality, most people are talking about very similar things,” Dr. Bureau said during Thursday’s news conference.
In a statement, Veterans Minister Ginette Petitpas Taylor said she will reach out to Mr. Nedohin and CLF Canada to learn more about their experience and the latest research.
“I want to be clear that there is no doubt that veterans can experience symptoms of traumatic brain injury resulting from service,” she said.