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Canberra Today 13°/16° | Friday, March 29, 2024 | Digital Edition | Crossword & Sudoku

Letter / Patch ‘em up and send ‘em back

I READ Robert Macklin’s article on PTSD (“Disgrace of homeless heroes”, CN, February 4) with interest. I co-ordinate Safe Shelter for homeless men; I served 23 years in the RAN, followed by 22 years in the Press Gallery and then almost three years as the National Secretary of the Defence Force Welfare Association.

quillParticularly in that last role, I followed the issue of PTSD among vets very closely.

Shell-shock or PTSD seems to have been worse for Australian Army personnel in and after World War I than World War II, possibly because the former saw a higher proportion of our soldiers spending prolonged periods in trenches under fire than was experienced in World War II.

Since 1990 Australia has been involved in almost continuous warlike deployments. The result has been exposure to traumatic incidents at a rate much higher than World War II.

The problem was exacerbated in the late 2000s when the Australian Army started to increase the length of unit deployments from six to eight months. That was partly for reasons of training rotations when back in Australia, but also to retain experience in the war zones. However, the effect in the individuals seems to have been that they were obviously more likely to experience multiple traumatic events during an eight-month deployment than a six-month one.

The then Surgeon-General, Maj-Gen Paul Alexander, remarked to me in early 2009 that they thought they had PTSD beaten; knowing that it can take 10 or more years to appear, I was a little surprised. I then reflected on the real role of the Defence medical system – patch ‘em up and send ‘em back up the line (and let the Department of Veterans Affairs sort out the mess when they get discharged).

Richard Griffiths, Lyneham

 

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