The military covenant commits to priority care for all who have been physically and mentally injured in service.  

Whilst physical injuries are easy to recognise and have a need for immediate and lifetime attention, mental injuries such as post traumatic stress are less visible, and very often delayed in symptom manifestation.  

The severity of the symptoms are very often compounded by underlying trauma in earlier life before military service, and by other stressful events more recently but occurring outside of military service.  

This reinforces the need for a more whole-person whole-life approach by the Department of Health to widen the access to the highly effective personal therapy that exists outside the NHS and that does not at present benefit from any of the £mmm being spent on statutory services and the larger charities that are often not fit for purpose.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-29807947 

A UK Forces' Veteran writes:
"I have just completed 6 weeks of therapy which was kindly provided free of charge by your wonderful charity. After suffering with PTSD for the best part of 15 years or more it was time to get some proper help after years of suffering in silence and not having the confidence to ask. I came across PTSD Resolution by chance after following them via Twitter and reading the work they do before going I knew about the main website.

"When I watched the video on the website of the veteran telling his story I was blown away by how similar if not exact his experiences were. I watched this video again and again over for days as it was difficult to take in someone who felt and suffered the same way I do. From the moment I finished watching it I was determined to fight this condition and contacted the charity the very next day to see what they could do.

"I spoke to lovely lady, whose name I can`t remember, who was very supportive and made me feel at ease while I explained my story and symptoms something I had never ever done before. Within 24 hrs of me speaking to PTSD Resolution I had my first appointment booked with a local psychotherapist that specialised in ex veterans suffering with PTSD the very next week. I met the therapist at the first session and immediately felt safe and able to tell him my feelings and my past experiences.

"I spent 11 years in the British Army in some extremely difficult and testing situations which had left mostly a lot of negative effects on me. Although these events happened in the 90`s in both Balkan conflicts and Northern Ireland what I saw and witnessed have stayed with me ever since. My marriage had failed due to my actions, drinking had become a problem, not because I was drinking all the time but drinking till I could not remember anything which for me was relief.

"I became very withdrawn from day to day life and started to avoid certain situations. The symptoms got progressively worse, lack of sleep, loud noises, panic attacks, unable to concentrate, hyper vigilance, reliving past experiences, uncontrollable crying and emotions with the feeling or terror and worthlessness till in my case it just gets worse and worse feeling there is no way out. My life was imploding before my very eyes and felt I could not do anything about it until one day when I feared for my own safety! Not a good situation to be in when you have children that have had no idea what I was going though and would of left them devastated. This was now very real. If I hadn’t stopped there and then I would not be here today writing this testimonial!

"Getting back to the treatment it is very intense, tiring and emotional with lots of tears and some sessions feeling completely drained. You relive the past horrors but learn new skills the therapist teaches you to combat your negative thoughts and experiences. Now these work, or they did for me, however sometimes they will not, and they didn’t at times, you have to prepare yourself to accept this and fight through it. I could feel myself changing week by week as sessions went by and feeling more positive something that I had not felt for a very long time.

"Each session you are scored on the past 7 days experiences something you have to complete yourself and at the end of the treatment you are shown the progress you have made via the scores that you submitted. When I saw my scores at the end of the 6 sessions I was gob smacked these were my scores not somebody else`s they weren’t made up nor had they been tampered with these were mine and a true record of progress.

"This treatment has saved my life and shown there is a future for me. I may need to go back in the future that I am very aware of but it`s my challenge now and I am determined to get better. I can`t express enough my gratitude to the wonderful people of PTSD resolution and those that raise vital funds for this charity. I feel very emotional writing this. I will be forever in debt and my aim now is to raise my funds for PTSD Resolution so that I can help the next veteran who comes forward with PTSD and desperately needs help. Please don’t suffer in silence there is help out there it takes confidence to ask but YOU can do it!

"If you want use this for the website and or Facebook/Twitter page then you have my approval I am also willing to take part in any surveys or anything else that could help others.

"Many thanks again I thank you from the bottom of my heart."

A British Forces Veteran