Remembrance Sunday Launch for ‘80:20 Appeal’ for Veterans’ Mental Health

A new appeal is launched to save a unique counselling service that resolves military trauma for nearly eight out of ten armed forces veterans that complete the programme offered by PTSD Resolution (Registered Charity No. 1133188) - in an average of just five one-hour sessions - www.ptsdresolution.org

“ PTSD Resolution was set up to provide free treatment without delay - because when veterans ask for help they are often desperate. As a charity we rely solely on voluntary donations. There’s no Government, social services or NHS help. Our funds are depleted by the demands for help, and now there’s a waiting list,” says Colonel Tony Gauvain (retired), chairman of the charity and a senior therapist in the PTSD Resolution programme.

The charity offers counselling with a unique 78 per cent success rate, Tony Gauvain says. It helps UK armed forces’ veterans, TA and reservists to relieve mental health problems resulting from military service and ease reintegration into a normal work & family life.

The “80:20 Appeal” has two goals: to end waiting lists for counselling; and secondly to offer extra support to the 20 per cent of trauma sufferers who do not respond to the initial programme. With the required funding, PTSD Resolution’s professional counsellors can then provide the help that is needed.

“ The PTSD Resolution national outreach programme has over 200 therapists. It is private, confidential, local and one-to-one. There is no referral needed, which reduces any sense of stigma. Counselling is brief and effective – as opposed to the medication, months of treatment or residential care that is too often the response to a problem that has a proven, compassionate resolution,” says Tony Gauvain.

Mental Health Disorders costing £25 billion each year - Trauma in the Workplace: New White Paper on Issues & Solutions

Organisations can find out about the potential impact of PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) for their staffing policies and practices with a new White Paper ‘Trauma in the Workplace’, authored by UK military veteran’s charity Resolution. A free copy of the White Paper is available for download: www.ptsdresolution.org/Trauma_Awareness_Training.pdf

Colonel A Gauvain (Retired), a counsellor and chairman of PTSD Resolution, says:

“ Mental health disorders account for one in five of all work days lost and cost UK employers £25 billion each year. Trauma in particular can result in depression and behavioural problems for employees. Left untreated, the condition may cause avoidable accidents, extended sick-leave and dismissal - and represents a major legal liability for the employer.”

PTSD can result from an incident at work, he says; but also from an event outside the workplace, many years previously, with the effects only surfacing as a result of domestic or work pressures, for example.

Disturbingly, most managers are unable to recognise the symptoms of trauma, from research by the charity. This is why Resolution has introduced a half-day course in TATE, Trauma Awareness Training for Employers.

Resolution is a UK charity (No. 1133188) that offers free counselling to UK Armed Forces veterans and reservists. It also provides support for HR personnel and line managers in organisations to meet employers’ statutory obligations - and avoid the commercial impact and the personal cost to employees of trauma. 

The Trauma Awareness training course enables managers to recognise trauma symptoms; understand the effects on staff behaviour; engage with traumatised people to identify practical options; and find a clear route to resolving workplace difficulties caused by trauma.

A free copy of the White Paper is available for download – and also details of the half-day course in central London, Nov 29th 2012 – TATE Training - www.ptsdresolution.org

Please take part in this research project

No one knows how many ex-service personnel are suffering the symptoms of post-traumatic stress. The Government chooses to clinically isolate PTSD from associated symptoms of alchohol and drug dependency, thus ignoring the possibility of cause and effect.
The charity PTSD Resolution (www.ptsdresolution.org) is hosting a university research project to identify how many veterans are affected, to bring this to the attention of Government. If you are a Veteran please take part and go to http://bit.ly/daaoAX (it is entirely private and confidential).

Alcohol 'a problem for veterans' - I wonder why?

Some commentators see the new study by doctors from King's College London (May, 2010) on mental health in the forces as reassuring, in that it does not find an increase in the numbers suffering from PTSD (‘alcohol a problem for war veterans, study finds’ (Independent)). Others have pointed out that even if only 4% of Afghanistan returnees suffer PTSD that still means 7,000 troops will suffer (‘Tidal wave of Mental Trauma among Servicemen’ (Telegraph)).

Both these approaches miss the point: If, as the study suggests, some 13% of returnees report that they are ‘misusing’ alcohol, there will be a reason why they are doing this, and the reason, if they were not ‘misusing’ alcohol before going to Afghanistan, will be something to do with having served in the war zone.

Convention sees psychiatric disorders as separate entities, so someone might suffer from PTSD and be alcohol-dependent and the clinic, should he be lucky enough to attend one, would not necessarily connect the two.

In reality these things are intimately interconnected, as people tend to self-medicate with alcohol (or anything else they can get their hands on) in order to dull the symptoms that they suffer as a result of having been in combat.

Our experience at Resolution is that if you take a soldier who is having problems with alcohol you will almost always find post-traumatic symptoms as well – not bad enough to qualify for a diagnosis of PTSD but unpleasant enough to contribute to the drinking behaviour.

From this it seems fair to conclude that the figure for the number of PTSD cases is really not relevant to the problems that service personnel face after combat.

Proper care for returnees and later veterans requires that we ask the right questions of those who do not have a diagnosis and give those who have post-traumatic symptoms treatment that actually reduces the impact of their traumatic memories, to the point where they can get on with their lives without suffering from the anger, fear, depression and all the other symptoms that military service can produce.

The PTSD Resolution outreach programme helps veterans and TA struggling to reintegrate into a normal work & family life because of military post traumatic stress suffered as a result of service in the armed forces. http://www.ptsdresolution.org/

Sir Richard Dannatt calls for more help for traumatised veterans

Sir Richard Dannatt spoke at the inauguration of PTSD-Resolution, as he helped us to launch the Resolution formally as an independent charity.
Sir Richard said cases of post traumatic stress diagnosed so far were only the tip of the iceberg. "These are hidden injuries," he said. He welcomed that serving soldiers were now trained to spot the symptoms of battle stress in comrades and contrasted that with his experience as a young officer, decorated for bravery in Northern Ireland.
"In South Armagh, where a company commander was blown up in front of us, we called in all patrols, opened the bar and got smashed. There has to be a better way," he said.

What does the success rate mean.

What percentage of clients actually get better? This is a big question for any treatment service, but there is no single answer because there are different ways of addressing the question. Does it mean what percentage of the whole population would get better using this treatment, or what percentage of those who make an initial enquiry to this service, or what percentage of those who start treatment, or what percentage of those who finish treatment in a planned way with a final assessment?

The picture is complicated by the specialised meaning attached to the word effectiveness. In medicine the word effectiveness relates to how well a treatment approach works in routine clinical practice, but efficacy is how well it works in specific conditions, for example in a clinical trial where certain patients, e.g. those with other disorders, are excluded because they would complicate the picture (and reduce the efficacy).

It is worth pointing out that the Resolution figure of better than 80% 'success' is not a measure of effectiveness in the clinical sense - it will take larger-scale research (for which we are now planning and raising funds) to establish that. Nor, on the other hand, is it a measure of efficacy, as we do not exclude people from the figures because they have other problems that might complicate treatment.

The Resolution figure of 80% is a measure of the outcomes from completed cases. We scale symptoms on first meeting, and scale them again at the last session. The data necessarily excludes those who come along for an assessment and then disappear, but it includes everyone else. If you are following this because you are interested in the outcome for this particular variant of trauma-focussed CBT you might well wonder whether there is something about the patient group that produces this result. It has been suggested, for example, that ex-military people might have more motivation to get better than the general population, and that might be true, and might be pushing the figure up. On the other hand, we could make it higher still by applying exclusion criteria to the service; refusing to take on people with drug or alcohol problems, or personality disorders, for example, and that we will not do.

This raises the question of what exactly are we measuring here, is it the clients or the treatment, and the answer is a combination of both. In other words, if you are an ex-military person with post-traumatic symptoms and you come to Resolution, present indications are that there is a strong probability that your symptoms will come down to a level where they are not considered to need further treatment.

The other question, perhaps more important, is what happens to the others, why do some people not go further than the initial assessment. At the moment we just do not know.

One of the main objects of Resolution is research, and this year we hope to see the first research project on this question.

Resolution now an independent charity

PTSD Resolution is now an independent charity, registered no. 1133188. This is a big step forward as Resolution becomes independent of its former parent charity and is free to develop policies and services in accordance with its charitable objects. These are:
“For the public benefit the relief of the mental sickness of veterans of the armed forces with post-traumatic symptoms in particular by the provision of counselling, treatment, and support and by:
(1) promoting research into treating post-traumatic symptoms, and to promote new ways of providing services, for veterans of the armed forces suffering from post traumatic stress disorder (ptsd), across the uk;
(2) advancing the education of veterans of the armed forces and the public about the mechanisms of trauma and means of reducing the impact of ptsd on veterans of the armed forces and the population in general; and
(3) promoting social inclusion among veterans of the armed forces with ptsd in prisons through counselling, treatment and support.”
Resolution sets out to treat the people that other services do not reach, to promote more tolerable and humane treatments, to sponsor research that may find even better ways of working with PTSD, to educate the people, such as Police officers, who really need to know about the logic of the traumatised brain, and to tackle the appalling problem of trauma in imprisoned veterans.