Covid hits military veterans’ mental health across the UK, says leading charity

Combat Stress, which has 150 clients in NI, has urged the government to raise awareness among veterans to encourage them to seek help.

Medical director Dr Walter Busuttil was speaking after NI charity Beyond the Battlefield found a spike in suicide among clients, with five dying in recent weeks, including Ards man Brett Savage.

Dr Busuttil said: “We haven’t seen this trend yet, but we are aware through our research that anxiety levels have increased among veterans.

“In our clinics, we’re finding that veterans with severe mental health problems have seen a deterioration due to the lockdown and require more support.”

He said the government could take simple steps to assist veterans at this time. “We would like to see more encouragement to veterans to seek mental health support.”

He added that the government has funded King’s College London to conduct a comprehensive study of the mental health of veterans during the pandemic, which his charity is taking part in.

Dr Busuttil is anxious to see the results of a study which was prompted by a campaign by this newspaper group, ‘Veterans in Crisis’. It discovered that UK allies have seen a spike in veteran suicides in recent years – but that the UK alone had not been monitoring the problem.

“Although the government then funded Manchester University last year to update the 2009 study on the scale of suicides of veterans, we are still waiting for the results to be published,” Dr Busuttil said.

The UK needs to understand the true scale of the issue to determine the best response, he added.

The NI Veterans Association said: “There are far to many different veterans groups, all viaing for attention, there should be one dedicated place to go for all the information a veteran may need, if for example he starts to have mental health problems. The appointment of a veterans champion recently week was a first good step.”

The progress on rolling out measures to support veterans, announced by the MoD last year, must be speeded up, he said. “This is an epidemic all of its own and is an emergency”.

The five-year average for NI suicides from January to June is 87. This year’s figure of 77 is expected to change due to a lag in post-mortems and reports.

In May the Samaritans said coronavirus was a factor in four out of every 10 calls.

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For help call:

:: Beyond the Battlefield: tel 028 91 228 389 or 07964574156;

:: Combat Stress: 0800 138 1619;

:: Lifeline: NI 0808 808 000;

:: The Samaritans: 116123.

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