Help for veterans in mental health battle

According to one academic, there could be as many as one million military veterans in the UK with mental health problems.

A new service, to be officially launched at a conference in York in March, involves four outreach therapists working with bodies like the Royal British Legion and SSAFA across Yorkshire to identify people needing help.

The therapists also work with organisations to make them aware of veterans’ unique needs.

Veterans’ mental health outreach therapist Rebecca Wilkinson, who covers Hull, East Yorkshire and North and North East Lincolnshire, said a major barrier for veterans was simply asking for help.

In the past the RBL would have had to convince a veteran to go to their GP, whereas now they could refer people directly to her.

She said: “Veterans feel they should be self-sufficient and having to ask for help is very difficult. They feel they should be able to do it themselves, they have worked in the buddy system, going to mates for support and once they are out it can be very difficult.

“They feel very socially isolated; they have to adjust to being a civilian again. Combine that with mental health problems and life can be quite tough. Navigating a system you might not have been in since you were 17 can be quite tough for some veterans.

“Most veterans know they can go to the RBL or SSAFA, if they tell their case worker they are not sleeping or feeling anxious, we can deliver an assessment where needed and up to six sessions of intervention and referral to another agency.

“We are not here to replace existing services, we are here to assist veterans in accessing existing services and to help those services develop in working with veterans.”

Despite the attention given to battle-related post traumatic stress disorder, mental illnesses associated with civilian life, like anxiety and depression were actually more prevalent, she said. She said: “There’s a misnomer that PTSD is a massive problem when evidence suggests it isn’t. Veterans are having the normal problems you would expect in the civilian population, anxiety, depression and alcohol misuse.”

Research by the King’s Centre for Military Health Research showed that just over half of the 315 “vulnerable” veterans who responded to a survey suffered from some depression, 18 per cent anxiety disorders, 16 per cent PTSD and 12 per cent with alcohol-related issues.

The service is being run by Humber NHS Foundation Trust in partnership with Leeds and York Partnership NHS Foundation Trust and Sheffield Health and Social Care NHS Foundation Trust.

Dr Jennie Ormerod, consultant clinical psychologist at Humber, added: “We were finding military veterans didn’t feel comfortable accessing mainstream NHS services because of the time they have spent in a military environment. We realised we needed to make it as easy as possible for these people to access our services as there is still a stigma surrounding mental health issues in the military.”

The Veterans Outreach Service is available to anyone who has completed one day’s service or more with the British Military, is a reservist not currently deployed or is a family member of military personnel. The conference will be held at the Royal York Hotel, York, on March 7.