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I believe that the issue of mental health services for our troops deploying or returning from combat is one that demands the attention of this body, if only for a few minutes today.

The fact is, psychiatric help is not widely available to CIA agents - and as in the military, there is a stigma attached to admitting post-traumatic stress.

And I think that it's - the military has actually made improvements, so people are considering post-traumatic stress disorder as, at the least, a possible psychological problem. You know, when I was in Vietnam, it was just considered malingering. And we're making progress.

Many soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan suffer from serious, long-term, physical and mental health problems, due to their service. It is unconscionable to cut the already limited health care benefits available to these brave men and women.

We need to look at how we can better fortify our force protection at military installations. But also, how can we deal with these mental health issues with our returning veterans? And our suicide rate in the military is twice as high as the average population.

And the program was developed in large part by behavioral scientists who were working with the military, who do everything they possibly can to measure a soldier's stress levels to see how they're doing physically and emotionally, as they go through this program.

Any other illness, any other disease that we're faced with, there's sympathy and understanding. We get help for those. With mental illness, our go-to is to categorize them as, 'Oh, they're crazy,' to belittle the problem.

Once you're labeled as mentally ill, and that's in your medical notes, then anything you say can be discounted as an artefact of your mental illness.

Those who become mentally ill often have a history of chronic pain.

I am also deeply concerned with the widespread, often undiagnosed, incidents of PTSD and the alarming suicide rates amongst our returning soldiers.