Ex Para kills himself

Fifteen people kill themselves each day in the UK. Our mental health services are overwhelmed. We should be able to give extra care to ex-military people, but government seems to treat them as if they are disposable goods.
Perhaps I'm being harsh, but so many end up on the streets, relationships break down owing to PTSD and the like. The answer isn't entirely money, it's care and compassion.

Given my clinical background (25 yrs as a military mental health nurse) and current research interest (military mental health), I could write a 'tl;dr' piece on this, but few would read it.

More simply, twenty-four years ago, the government introduced the first three National Service Frameworks, aimed at gripping the three most important health challenges. One was on cancer care, one was on coronary care...and the third was on mental health, so the problem was recognised and formally acknowledged then. What's happened since is less to do with government intent and more to do with persistent negative attitudes and scepticism in wider society adversely influencing government decision-making. 

The military is a microcosm of mainstream society, in which you can see both extremes. The dominant military psyche is one in which mental health problems are seen as signs of weakness, so you can imagine the confusion and distress caused when warrior alpha males find themselves stricken with something the don't believe in (mental health problems) and that they believe is a sign of their own weakness. In my extensive experience, though, the most passionate advocates for more and better mental health services are those who went through this experience. The current Chief of the General Staff, General Sir Patrick Sanders, is one such example, as is Major Glenn Houghton, formerly Senior Enlisted Advisor to the Chiefs of Staff Committee and also, if you like popular references, Jason Fox of SAS: Who Dares Wins.

In relation to this and far too many other cases, the problem is the gap in service provision between what is available to service personnel whilst serving and what is then available to them in the NHS after they have left.

My last job in uniform was running the UK's largest military mental health team. Our KPIs were to see urgent referrals in 24 hours and routine referrals within 2 weeks, after which definitive treatment would begin immediately. Compare that with what is available in the NHS.  

I don't want to divert this thread too far away from the OP, but one of the things military leaders know that political leaders either don't know or too readily dismiss is that you can't fight an idea. I was taught that at Staff College, too. Even today in Israel/Gaza, the battle is not between peoples, but between ideas. You can kill people, but you can't kill ideas. 

Yes, Vinny...you're right and it does.

Carl von Clausewitz said that, 'war is politics by other means'. From my perspective - which I appreciate is biased - many small wars are an extension of Clausewitz' observation. That war in Afghanistan wasn't prosecuted because we in the West were offended at the horrific medieval regime in that country, but because that regime was using terror to project its own ideas onto the West. We were therefore trying to use military force as a political tool, because any military commander would tell you that, as a military objective, it was unsound.

As I noted earlier, when an individual's core beliefs and assumptions about themselves and their world are challenged or broken, that has a profound psychological effect. Most if not all service personnel believe that when they are deployed they are 'doing the right thing'. When it becomes clear that they were not, it can have a crushing effect.

When I deployed to Iraq, I did not go to fight the enemy (even though the enemy tried to fight me). I was there to provided medical support to our own 3 PARA and their Australian equivalent, who were themselves providing force protection to Japanese military engineers who were rebuilding roads, schools and hospitals that Saddam had destroyed. So I had a clear sense of mission and of moral justification. Troops in Afghanistan were facing a very different set of circumstances. 

The other thing is this; a friend of mine was in Afghanistan as a major in an infantry battalion. I came to know him as he volunteered to be one of my research subjects for my PhD. He grew up in a military family and had wanted to be a soldier since he first picked up a stick and pretended it was a rifle, as a toddler. However, after several very 'crunchy' (as we say in the trade! ) tours on HERRICK, he developed PTSD and chronic depression and in his personal reflections during our research interviews admitted that he felt his own core beliefs and assumptions about 'being a soldier' had been crushed and exposed as folly. That's a hard lesson, but one many veterans learn. For some, it's too much. 

Twenty-five years ago, I looked after a WW2 veteran who had kept himself together for fifty years until his wife died...and then ended up hospitalised with his PTSD. 

another result of Blair’s destruction of a unified, UK wide health service.

Note carefully his move to wales meant he was put at the bottom of the queue behind irish tinkers and asylum seekers of course

Pro devolutionists must he really fucking proud of themselves.

Carty in my experience, and this only became obvious to me in later years, the problem was not so much the availability of mental health provision, the problem was accessing it. There was no one at regimental level who understood mental health. Some people didn't know they needed help and there was no one there to tell them they needed help. This resulted in more than one tragedy that at the time was put down to other things, but with the luxury of time I can look back and see things that were not obvious at the time. Things that I'm sure a mental health care professional would have seen and problems could have been addressed. The macho environment probably didn't help, but regardless, there was no one to speak to at regimental level. I suspect, I hope, things have changed.