armed forces community experiences a unique combination of pressures,’ national armed forces lead for WithYou, Andy Craze, tells DDN.‘ Operational stress, trauma exposure, sudden transition to civilian life, loss of identity, chronic pain – and sometimes fractured relationships.’

According to a study of almost 3,000 veterans by King’ s College London, while‘ the majority’ of UK armed forces personnel coped well with military service and its challenges, and successfully adapted to civilian life afterwards, rates of common mental disorders and alcohol misuse were nonetheless close to double that of the general population – a rate that may have been heightened by the fact that many of those in the study had served in Iraq or Afghanistan. However it was something that could not be explained by‘ sociodemographic

differences between veterans and the general population samples’, the researchers pointed out, while a ten-year study in the US found more than a quarter of American veterans to be consuming alcohol‘ at the at-risk-to-excessive level’.

Alongside combat-related PTSD and the associated hypervigilance and hyperarousal, veterans can also face difficulties fitting back into society and relating to people who haven’ t had similar experiences. They might also struggle with intense feelings of guilt, particularly if they’ ve witnessed the deaths of friends or civilians.

SENSE OF PRIDE And while a sense of stigma and shame remains one of the biggest deterrents to anyone seeking help for drug or alcohol problems, this is often far worse for veterans. There’ s a real sense of pride in the military, but with that comes the risk that the very act of seeking help could feel like a sign of weakness. According to

The biggest barrier for most is the belief that asking for help is weakness.

ANDY CRAZE

Craze, this remains the‘ biggest barrier’ for most –‘ the belief that asking for help is weakness. Many veterans have spent years in environments where vulnerability wasn’ t encouraged.’

WithYou has a long history of providing specialised support to veterans, and was the first drug and alcohol service provider to receive a gold award in the Ministry of Defence’ s employer recognition scheme. Its Rebuild Project was launched to provide specialist trauma-focused support for female veterans( DDN, March, page 6) and, building on the success of that, the charity is now launching a new traumafocused treatment pilot for veterans in North Lincolnshire, Wigan and Leigh, North Somerset, and Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole.

The specialist support on offer at these pilot programmes is taking a different approach to previous veteran support services by making specific traumafocused therapies – such as EMDR( eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing), CBT and cognitive processing therapy – a key part of the treatment pathway. The idea is to make sure that people don’ t have to

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