Firstly any suicide is tragic, but what’s more tragic is the military culture that discourages young people from seeking help or support – for fear of seeming weak. How many more kids have to die like this before the grass-roots mainstream military is ready to accept the culture-change it needs? We in the Defence Mental Health Services stand ready to help, but we can do nothing until a problem is brought to our attention. It really is down to commanders to grip this – they are the ones who should know their people.
Now to the good doctor...
The second point is that whilst there may (I'll check) only be 13 UNIFORMED psychiatrists working for MoD, there are quite a few more civilian psychiatrists and when I get back to the office I’ll tot ‘em up if anyone’s interested.
Thirdly, if the smug Dr Pemberton had spent a bit longer in psych outpatients – and maybe even paid attention – he would have noted that to all intents and purposes community mental health is a NURSE-LED service. Again, specific numbers will have to wait, but we have well over 60 specialist psychiatric nurses – in uniform across all three Services – and most trained in trauma-focused CBT, EMDR and other client-specific (that’s you guys) therapies designed to work specifically with psychological trauma. A standard community mental health service we are not. My current unit has 2 psychiatrists, a psychologist, a mental health social worker and 9 community mental health nurses. We cover a tri-Service population of around 24,000 personnel and all bar 1 (the new girl – give her chance!) of our clinical staff are specially trained in dealing with psychological trauma.
I’m afraid to say from my own experience of 2 of the 3 Services that the very existence of specialist mental health services within the military is not widely known about. I know that RAF officers get a 90 minute presentation on Intermediate Command and Staff Course (Air), I have no idea whether ICSC(Maritime) get any input but I also note that the Army apparently have no interest in delivering such a presentation to the guys and gals on ICSC(Land). Go figure. You either take this issue seriously or you don’t.