Road to Mental Readiness (R2MR)

The goal of R2MR is to improve short term performance and long term mental health outcomes.

Research has shown that educational approaches such as Road to Mental Readiness are having a positive effect on reducing mental health stigma, encouraging individuals to seek care, removing barriers to accessing care, and providing leaders at all levels with a better understanding of what they can do to assist fellow CAF members. Source: Canadian Armed Forces Suicide Prevention Program, Major Stéphane Roux, Accreditation Canada

Road to Mental Readiness (R2MR) training encompasses the entire package of resilience and mental health training that is embedded throughout Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) members’ career, including the deployment cycle. R2MR training is layered and tailored to meet the relevant demands and responsibilities CAF personnel encounter at each stage of their career and while on deployment. In this way R2MR is designed to ensure that the most appropriate training is provided when required to ensure CAF personnel are prepared mentally for the challenges they may encounter. The overall goal of this training is to improve short term performance and long term mental health outcomes.

R2MR is has a solid foundation in the concept of resilience. Resilience is the capacity of a soldier to recover quickly, resist, and possibly even thrive in the face of direct/indirect traumatic events and adverse situations in garrison, training and operational environments. Recovery from the greatest physical and mental hardships of the military environment is geared in the near term to the soldier’s current mission, but also is required in the long term throughout one’s career.1

This website is designed to provide more information about the types of R2MR training provided to CAF personnel throughout their career, during deployment, and to CAF families.

Transcript

[Start of video]

[Fade in to Brigadier-General (BGen) Jonathan Vance, Former Task Force Commander in Afghanistan]

[BGen Vance, speaking to the camera:] The term military resilience applies to everyone, at all levels of warfare where one [New image: Soldiers moving in an operation zone, BGen Vance voice-over] has to have the personal capacity to face the most extreme circumstances that you can think of or be able to face the daily grind of operations and be able to continue.

[BGen Vance, speaking to the camera:] At the same time, military resiliency also applies to our longevity. You might be ah, have the capacity to keep fighting or [New image: Soldiers on military vehicles, BGen Vance voice-over] keep doing your job on your tour but we want you to be able to do your job on future tours.

[BGen Vance, speaking to the camera:] So military resilience applies to both the mission focus as well as to the warrior ethos and your longevity in the Armed Forces such that you can repeat that.

[End of video]


1 Definition from Army and adopted by CAF as definition for resilience.

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