PTSD Forum

[Bugly]

Talking to ex forces with PTSD helps, I would not even admit to having PTSD if talking to ex forces who do not have PTSD unless it's got the anominmity (sp?) of a forum like ARRSE.

edited to add: if there was a day center for peeps with mental health problems, which had say ex forces as staff or volunteers that would be different as they would know/have knowledge of PTSD and confidentiality and in that enviroment having someone who knows the forces would help.

[ABrighter2006]

A few guys have mentioned how talking to ex-service mates really helps.

Like Ski - I'll point out now that I'm not a healthcare professional, nor a sufferer. I have done a bit of work on PTSD, and have come out of that with a resolve to do anything I can to help. (Which includes effing off if told to do so...)

I fully understand that every injury is different, that some guys prefer the anonymity afforded by a web forum, while others take a great deal of strength from talking face-to-face with ex-servicemen and other sufferers. My question is this: If a system could be set up (distinct from ARRSE for reasons in above posts) whereby sufferers could be put into contact with local ex-servicemen willing to lend an ear - would it be of help?

YES.

Thanks for posting this Sarnian, and yes, in conjunction with an easily accesed online forum and resource infrastructure, this is exactly what is going to lead to this subject being communicated effectively.

It follows that at present, there are many agencies (Combat Stress and the recent Kings report) that are indicating an increasing number of PTSD sufferers being diagnosed sooner than before. This number in all liklihood will rise sharply over the next five - seven years, as the US Veteran's Administration realised in the ten years following Vietnam. The UK Government needs to be pumping effort into communicating the information out and getting the information in.

Presently, my belief is that the current "numbers" represent the tip of a growing iceburg that the UK Government is aware of. But instead of actively assisting those serving and former service personel, who suffer PTSD as a result of their service, the government chooses to steer a cause avoiding the financial / resourcing issues that would be truly required to address the issue to the satisfaction of sufferers, their' partners and families.

I acknowledge that Combat Stress is the lead UK Agency in respect of PTSD treatment and knowledge. I also seethe that what appears to be the only resource outside of the very limited military physchiatric footprint throughout the armed forces world, survives as a charity with the UK Government supplying, in relative terms, minimal funding to it, whilst not setting up additional systems to know the size of the problem it faces in the years ahead. If Combat Stress is struggling now, what are the trends telling us?

Perhaps, mine is a strong view, but I would be interested to know from the Defence Minister, and those responsible thoughout the health care and UK military with responsibilities in this area, the following:

How many former service pers are diagnosed with PTSD?

What is the estimation of how this number will change in the year 2010, 2015?

And, if the number of suffers, in 2010 is substantially more, what funding the government will be putting into additional resources, and when?

Build it and they will come - there again, knowing the scale of the problem, and then acknowledging it, might force the government into action - and we couldn't have that now, could we?

Lurking journalist, Mark Thomas, or politician who gives a shit about our armed forces, welcome to assist.

[amazing__lobster]

AB,

could you not get your local MP to find out those statts for you? Or at least ask about them in parliment?

[ABrighter2006]

AB,

could you not get your local MP to find out those statts for you? Or at least ask about them in parliment?

Tried that root AL, and got such a fine "party line" response, that I'd prefer to see someone who knows what they're doing with statistical analysis, and does not have a direct political view to research it. I have discussed this very area of concern with my elected representative though, to answer your question, but, busy people and all of that!

[oscar1whisky]

i've recently been diagnosed with ptsd. i went for a check up (this 2 years after a heart attack), got the usual "oh, are you still alive, then?" and the fatal question, "any other problems?" now i know you'll take the urine, but i'd had several bouts of walking along and suddenly feeling myself watching "me" walking about 10 yards ahead. well! the gp kept eyeing up the door for a sharp exit, asked if i heard voices, and did they tell me to do anything... i spotted a rubber room looming up fast, and denied (truthfully!) any voices. so, ptsd it is. no idea which particular thing set it off, but i'd really rather not have it, thanks all the same. as for the out of body stuff, what a rush that is after the initial confusion and fear. not to be recommended though. thanks arrse, great way to clear the air

[EX_REME]

What is it called when you get mood swings? Is it that?


I only ask as I have recently found myself with little patience and crappy mood swings.

Nm if it isn't.

As others have said, it could be anything. However if this is not normal for you, and you are concerned then speak to someone. A good indicator if it is not normal for you btw is if close friends or partners mention something.

It is not soo bad, I can handle it right now, I was just wondering if it will bite me a few years from now really. I am starting to feel a bit better already, I only went out to COB for just over a week last week, some sh1tty place that is. I think a lot of the guys that are doing 6 months out there now will come back with some real phycological problems....

[the_boy_syrup]

Mods I've stuck this in here as I thought it might get Buried in the other PTSD thread and it's worth a read
If you want to move it then please do so


The agonies that haunt our army heroes

Battlefield demons: Peter Mahoney

With a valedictory flourish of military pride, Peter Mahoney went up to his bathroom where he shaved, donned his crisply-pressed Army uniform bedecked with medals, and walked to the garage of his family home.

Shutting the doors behind him, he climbed into the family Rover.

There, surrounded by photographs of his four children, along with Valentine's cards he'd swopped with wife Donna during their 22-year marriage, he turned on the ignition and waited. His wife found his body a few hours later.

A few weeks after his suicide in 2004, another bereaved soldier's relative sent her a sympathy card, along with details of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Until that point, she had never heard of the condition - but she recognised immediately the demons that had driven her husband to his untimely death.

The lifelong Territorial Army reservist who had returned home from Iraq 13 months earlier, had never been the same loving husband and father who had gone enthusiastically to fight there in 2003.

The horrors he witnessed there never left him, but no one spotted the signs, and like many a soldier since, when he came home, he felt abandoned and very much alone.

Last week, a ground-breaking study of veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan revealed truly shocking statistics about the mental health of our troops involved in those vicious campaigns.

After studying thousands of personnel, doctors from King's College, London, found strong links between 'prolonged deployment' caused by troop shortages and higher rates of psychiatric illness, traumatic stress, alcoholism and domestic problems.

Troops who spend more than 13 months on operations over a three-year period - exceeding the Army's own guidelines - are 58 per cent more likely to develop traumatic stress, and also face a 35 per cent greater chance of becoming alcoholics.

Experts point out that the 'over-stretched' Army does woefully little to detect or treat conditions such as traumatic stress and too often casts its troops aside once they return home.

How can a nation so proud of its servicemen and women, rightfully regarded as probably the finest in the world, treat them so shabbily?

As they engage in two of the most intensely fought conflicts since World War II, surely we owe them better than this.

Here, the Mail tells the stories of the heroes Britain seems to have forgotten, who found fighting an enemy abroad was nothing compared to the battle they would face when they returned home.

Donna Mahoney was used to watching her husband, a military ambulance driver in the Territorials, go overseas to fight.

The long-distance lorry driver had joined the reservists in his early 20s and at the age of 44, when he left for Iraq to join 84 Medical Supplies Squadron, he was as keen as the rawest recruit.

Before that, he had served in the hell-holes of Bosnia and Northern Ireland at the height of the troubles. But when he returned to Britain in July 2003, after six months in Iraq, his demeanour was very different.

Donna, 43, recalls the ghosts he brought home, which unlike the desert dust coating his Bergen rucksack and uniform, he was unable to shake off.

The darkest memory was of a little girl, barely older than his own sixyearold daughter, Vicky, lynched by an Iraqi mob for accepting sweets from a passing soldier. The image of her swinging from a noose would return to him, night after night in his dreams.

"He saw so many bad things, but that was the one he would talk about," recalls Donna. "The little girl was just one of many corpses he had to deal with, and I'm sure he began to think more deeply about the war as a result.

"In Bosnia, he'd been carrying missiles in his truck; in Iraq he was carrying casualties. He saw first-hand the damage that those bombs do, and the guilt began to eat away at him."

It didn't help that Private Mahoney, like many others, also began to question the basis of the war he was fighting.

"He came to the conclusion it was all about oil, and saw the whole thing as a futile waste of life," said Donna, from Carlisle, a former nurse who now works in a department store.

Peter's behaviour made him difficult to console. He was distant with his children - especially Vicky - and became physically abusive to his wife.

"I look back know and I can see exactly what was happening to him," says Donna, "but at the time, I was so distraught I couldn't. He'd beaten me up and I was getting domestic violence counselling, and I was just so angry with him for hitting me, and he made out everything was my fault.

"We all gave him a wide berth, but no one asked Peter how he was, or talked to him about what was troubling him.

"I felt on my own here in Carlisle because we're not in a garrison and in any case, Peter was in the TA, not the regular Army. But since his death, I've met other veterans and their families, and it's struck me how they're all going through similar emotions.

"I go and do talks to other wives of soldiers who are out there serving, and they've said when they come

home for their R&R, they're cold with children, they want peace and quiet and won't go to the pub - these are all possible signs of traumatic stress.

"They like to be on their own and they can't cope with noise. When children want to sit and play, they just can't be bothered.

"They'll go off on their own and come back after about four or five hours. They don't know where they've been or what they've done. If they go out for a drink, they get blind drunk and pick on people and get into fights. One word will set them off.

"My husband and I went to watch a concert, and he just walked out, as he couldn't stand all the people."

The innocuous sound of fireworks on bonfire night took Peter Mahoney straight back to artillery barrages in Iraq, and left the tall, muscular soldier quivering with fear behind the sofa.

The night before his death, Donna had gone to a friend's house to babysit overnight, and the children were all away.

"It was the first time he'd been left on his own for a night," she recalled. "We found him dead the next day."

Because her husband did not die in service, Donna is not entitled to a war widow's pension and financial worries have only added to her grief.

She says: "The Army won't believe he had traumatic stress, because there's no proof of it. No one spotted the signs and now no one seems to care."

She has appealed against the MoD's decision not to grant her a war widow's pension, and awaits a decision.

So far, she has received £1,450 compensation from the Army for her husband's death, which includes a £500 contribution to Peter Mahoney's £2,000 funeral, and another £150 for her children's first Christmas without a father.


Other help has come from charities such as the Royal British Legion and the National Gulf War Veterans' Association.

As she puts it: "I nearly lost my house at one point, and without the help from those organisations, there would have been no presents at Christmas for the kids at all."

And what effect has losing their father in such distressing circumstances had on those children?

"They have have coped as best they could. My eldest one, Matthew, 22, wanted to be an electrical engineer, but now he wants to be a vicar.

"Ashley, 21, hit the bottle really hard, but he's OK now and has just qualified as a hairdresser.

"Ben, who's 13 and was ten at the time, has started to ask questions. It's just started to hit Vicky, who's now nine, because now she's understanding it a bit more, she's beginning to grieve.

"We didn't tell him or Vicky the truth then, but they want to know now." Sadly, for many of those questions, Donna has no answer.

Neither does Corporal Dave Corrigan, 47, who spent 22 years in the regular and Territorial Army and has a chest full of medals to prove it. When he joined the Parachute Regiment, he was the champion recruit on the Paras' gruelling 'P-Company' selection course.

But after he answered the call to go to Iraq at five days' notice as a reservist, the ambulance driver from Newton Aycliffe, County Durham - in Tony Blair's former constituency of Sedgefield - was disgusted with the way the Army "chewed me up and spat me out".

In Iraq, the father-of-one became an ambulance field commander and was attached to 16 Air Assault Brigade with many of his old comrades from the Paras. "I didn't hesitate to go out there," he says.

But soon after the battle started, he tore the cartilage in his knee falling out of a speeding ambulance during a battle near Adaiya, southern Iraq.

During the firefight, and before his accident, he remembers seeing a brutally maimed young girl being loaded into a military ambulance after being caught in an explosion.

"She was the same age as my daughter, Naomi, about two-and-a-half at the time. She had lost all her limbs and was haemorrhaging massively. She didn't survive."

After being treated, but still in much pain, he was 'medevaced' back home to RAF Halton in Buckinghamshire.

So far, it seemed, the Army was taking care of its own. Not for long.

Upon arrival at Halton, he was told to go and see his GP and left to find his own way home in the middle of the night. Barely able to walk and carrying a 100lb rucksack, he hitchhiked.

"I gave my life to the Army and they turned their back on me," he says.

In the months that followed, two operations in a military hospital failed to cure his knee and he ended up having it treated privately, at a cost of £4,000, thankfully picked up by a veterans' charity.

But the scars on his knee were just the most visible injury. In his mind, the effects of traumatic stress were beginning to reveal themselves.

"Looking back, from day one I had traumatic stress, but no one ever asked, or helped me. The lack of help was absolutely disgraceful. I was very angry at the way I was treated.


"I think the ignorance of sending more than 40,000 troops to war, and not even considering that there may be psychological problems coming back, says it all."

About 18 months ago, while visiting his GP, he lashed out at the doctor, who thankfully recommended him for counselling.

"My wife Marie is now on antidepressants as she tries to cope with my mood swings. Naomi, who's now six, has to tread on eggshells around me and I end up having arguments with my wife and then I'll go off and sit in McDonald's for two hours staring into space.

"It's affected me severely at work, as I can't do front-line ambulance duties - it just brings it all back."

It would be nice to think that his NHS employers, the North-East Ambulance Service, at least treated him in a better way than the Army. Think again.

Earlier this year, after his injured knee collapsed, they tried to slash his salary from £21,000 to £12,000 after he was transferred to 'light duties' - which involved shifting bags of medical records, weighing up to 70lb.

The service re-instated his salary after a story appeared in a local newspaper.

Psychiatrist Alan Penny, a senior trauma therapist for Assist, a charity helping servicemen and women with psychological problems, says: "There are no provisions at all in the Army for dealing with traumatic stress. These soldiers witness unthinkable horrors and then are expected to return to normal.

"We need trained people on hand to observe the soldiers on their return for at least six months. Thirty per cent of soldiers will suffer from traumatic stress or other related problems, so it is essential something is done.

"I have been urging the MoD for years to do something, but our organisation keeps getting fobbed off with letters. Not doing anything is dangerous for all the soldiers, as the longer it is left, the worse the symptoms become.


The hardest is for soldiers who spot the signs early but who are too frightened to tell their superior officers.

"The provisions don't exist for them within the system so the lucky few who hear about us come in complete secret.

"I am currently seeing a young soldier in his early 20s who came back traumatised from Iraq and wants treatment before he returns on his second tour in two months' time. There is nothing available for him at his regiment.

"The Army - quite rightly in many cases - turns its soldiers into efficient machines who are some of the best in the world. But their psychological welfare must not be ignored - after all, they're human."

Iraq and Afghanistan may have exacerbated the problem of traumatic stress, but soldiers from earlier conflicts still suffer in silence.

Former artillery bombardier Giles Chadwick-Healey, 31, from North Yorkshire, is unemployed and on benefits after the horrors of ethnic cleansing in Bosnia in the mid-1990s left him a broken man.

Yet, all he wanted - and astonishingly still does - was to be a soldier.

"Despite everything that has happened to me - my post-traumatic stress, severe depression and anxiety, as well as suicidal thoughts stemming from my experiences in Bosnia - I never wanted to leave the Army.

"Had they offered to help me, recognised my illness and worked through it with me, I truly believe I would still be in their employ."

Unable to continue in the Army, he went AWOL, fleeing to Spain where he lost himself in drink and drugs. When he did return, with the help of Assist, he gave himself up to the Army, hoping to be re-instated. He reckoned without the British Army's modern version of Catch-22.

"The Army told me that I could only come back to work if I signed a form to say I didn't have traumatic stress. That way, I would just do my punishment for going AWOL and start work. If I admitted to having traumatic stress, they would have to sign me off on medical grounds."

He did and the Army lost another NCO without the burden of having to help him. Now he is trying to rebuild his life, but it's a tough struggle, even after a decade.

Last Friday, the third anniversary of Peter Mahoney's suicide, his widow Donna laid a wreath of flowers at the cenotaph in Carlisle.

"I put it down for my husband, but I also put a yellow ribbon on it for the other soldiers - not only those who have died, but also for those who have come home and are injured or are suffering as Peter did.

"People forget them, because they don't appear in the casualty figures. They are the forgotten victims."

My Bold
Why would they medivac someone to RAF Halton when the hospital shut in 1995?

[walter_mitless]

the_boy_syrup:

Peter obviously had a great missus, caring, focused and strong, which we will all need. There appear to be many, many different issues with this guy. This case is very sad, and regrettably, attempted suicides are all too common. It's on my record, too.

I used to feel worthless and inadequate. I used to fail at any thing I tried.
Fifteen years of chaos, lost family, lost children, lost loves.

Personally, I need people in my life who support me and that listen to me, if I am to have truly happy relationships. Too many will judge PTSD sufferers and thru' ignorance or under qualification, tell us we are not disabled. Or they'll refuse to change. Because PTSD isn't always visible.

Avoid the triggers, lose the hassle, and keep your eye on the aim, that's my own road to recovery.

Long periods exposed to hostile theatres take their toll, the side effects of PTSD and combat stress will cause a multitude of issues in all of us.

Unfortunately, we may not be able to support or tolerate issues and sans souci, amongst others, especially amongst friends and our families. I might have been kept away from people, because of my issues, like being hidden away in a cupboard. If you're feeling this, don't let them drag you down, but keep pushing forward. You're much more valuable.

Having taken myself apart during counselling training these past eighteen months, I've reached a level where I'm comfortable with myself, and know that I still have to recover from that long painful journey, too. But one day, I will have recovered, because I put myself through personal development. What, where, how and why, have all been answered, for me.
I've learnt a hell of a lot , and can recognise things that others cannot see or that others want to hide. I've been honest with myself and with my closest people. There's no "double life" for me, or any denial.

Don't recognise yourself here, because it's not supposed to be about anyone, but me.

Any similarity to persons, living or dead, or any suggestion of reference to other people or events, is purely coincidental. Offence is not inferred nor should any be taken. Ice creams are sold at the interval. Thank you.

Regards

Walt

[36thulster]

Mucus wrote about Walter Mitless posting:

"Couldn't agree with you more. For me the best coping mechanism is routine. Anything out of the ordinary and it gets a bit flakey.
As for the open up bit, scarey, very.

All the best to you mate." unquote

.....Thanks. Yes, routine is good, and a change to routine can be very, very testing.

themaadone: no offence meant mate, just seen us sufferers referred to on here as "fruitcakes". If that offended, you, my apologies.

Bugly: I may not agree with you in everything, but I respect your right to speak. How are you coping with your PTSD ?

Regards

Walt

Hey I don't agree with ANYTHING he says but on this subject I not only respect his right to speak but would actively encourage it.
On the question of routine, for some it can be useful as long as the routine isn't self destructive.

Jimbo, wots wrong with gettin up and waiting outside the front door for your local to open, then drinking yourself stupid to forget, sometimes works for me

[walter_mitless]

Have a look at this: http://www.nice.org.uk/pdf/CG026fullguideline.pdf

Commissioned by NICE (National Institute for Clinical Excellence).

You may like to look at sections 2 to 2.1.4. on this document.

It seems pretty relevant to my mind, as a practitioner in training, already half way through counselling studies. I am myself, registered as a war pensioner and receive MOD income on top of my own small earnings.
I feel this document is valid.I have also recognized a lot of myself, myself in it. Though you may disagree.

I'd rather read this, than listen to the amateur experts who claim to understand, and "know lots of guys with PTSD". Forget it, that's just boll*x.
We are all individuals, and the mind is a vulnerable, complex organ.

And a word of warning, you might be contacted online, actually to be baited as guinea pigs or as unsuspecting sources. You're vulnerable with PTSD. Don't make the mistake of falling for the charm, the personality, and of allowing your vulnerability to trust them. They always want something. And it's not usually you, unless they take a shine to you.