View Full Version : Psychological effects of overstretch
Horror box
3rd Aug 2007, 09:42
Interesting article today about the issues faced by service personnel spending increasing amounts of time away from home. Although Derek Twigg welcomes the research, he states that pschological problems in the armed forces remain at a low level.
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/rtrs/20070803/tuk-uk-britain-overstretch-fa6b408_2.html
Pilot Pacifier
3rd Aug 2007, 19:21
Psychological effects of overstretch
= Can't wait to bloody leave :}
465 days to go...
The Helpful Stacker
3rd Aug 2007, 20:07
...he states that pschological problems in the armed forces remain at a low level
That'll be reported levels then?
Having experienced the military mental health care myself I can say that although they did a marvellous job for me its not exactly easily accessible or well known. Also pre-deployment training hardly scratches the surface of what you can expect when in theatre but then again how can it? How can a few weeks at STANTA recreate being mortared/rocketed 20 odd times a day or in the case of those lads who have to spend a bit more time outside the wire, watching mates get blown up by IEDs/shot or 'just' the constant fear you feel waiting for something to happen whilst stood in the back of a Land Rover outside the wire?
SRENNAPS
3rd Aug 2007, 20:15
This article was briefly talked about on Radio 4 quite early this morning and I may have miss-heard, but I am sure that the person being interviewed mentioned that when figures were taken there were only “a handful” of British Troops in Afghanistan.
So I would suggest it is rather worse now!!!!!!!!............
Just goes to show that you can only "Overstretch" so far and then something will snap.
I've Just signed on for another 3 years I must be mad
TacEval Inject
5th Aug 2007, 21:51
9 years, 9 months, 7 days.
I'm not counting.
Why would I?
Life is great.
TI
Blacksheep
6th Aug 2007, 05:42
Remember the D-Day Dodgers from sunny Italy? The Eighth Army.
Away in the sand pit for three years without a single break, their reward was the invasion of Sicily followed by the Invasion of Italy and the advance upon Rome, fighting every inch of the way. For most of them it was five years away from home fighting with shortages of food, ammunition and in many cases with obsolete equipment. They came home fit, sane (mostly - Spike Milligan is an obvious exception) and randy and got on with the rest of their lives without counselling or help. Millions of their comrades in arms - and their enemies too - went through the same without cracking up. Are the 'psychological effects of overstretch' a bit over-stretched perhaps?
Yes but they were fighting a proper war with clearly defined lines of battle and some honour between opposing forces.
SirToppamHat
6th Aug 2007, 08:14
And they were fighting with the whole nation in support and knowing that their families back in the UK were being as well looked after and supported as possible under the prevailing circumstances.
STH
toddbabe
6th Aug 2007, 08:24
Blacksheep I think you will find that a lot of Servicemen DID/DO suffer terrible mental illness after the World wars! It just wasn't recognised as easily or exposed as much ( not very British don't you know!)
I wish people would stop trying to belittle the effects these two unjust and pointless wars are having on young lives everywhere, the attitude of
"we/they had it much worse and were fine" is such a load of bollox, terrible things happen in war to young men and women and they need the full and unquestioning support of their country and government to help them through it.
Look at the massive problems experienced by the Americans since Vietnam.:ugh:
Remember the D-Day Dodgers from sunny Italy? The Eighth Army.
Away in the sand pit for three years without a single break, their reward was the invasion of Sicily followed by the Invasion of Italy and the advance upon Rome, fighting every inch of the way. For most of them it was five years away from home fighting with shortages of food, ammunition and in many cases with obsolete equipment. They came home fit, sane (mostly - Spike Milligan is an obvious exception) and randy and got on with the rest of their lives without counselling or help. Millions of their comrades in arms - and their enemies too - went through the same without cracking up. Are the 'psychological effects of overstretch' a bit over-stretched perhaps?
Sorry, but you're wrong. We have a generation of people in their 20's who tell of fathers who fail to connect with them. Why? Because their dads were distant to them and now the problem is too late to address. Its one of the reasons why the 70s was so introspective and thoughtful.. we had folk in their 20s and 30s struggling to find themselves, because they hadn't been guided. 'I don't like to talk about it' was for decades missinterpreted as a quietly proud and very British way of expressing oneself. We now know that in many instances, it was a wasted generation crying inside and no one was listening.
Blacksheep
6th Aug 2007, 09:57
Touché. You're both right; ironical isn't it?
My Dad never spoke about the bad bits only the parts about the rough seas and the cold. When I was at home for his 80th birthday party I mentioned an incident that happened to his ship just after D Day when they were close inshore chasing some 'R' boats that had tried to lay mines in the swept channel. In that action shore batteries hit the ship and they had casualties - including dead - on the bridge, which as a signaller was his action station. When he recounted the experience it was the first time he'd ever spoken of it and as he told me what happened he burst into tears. 61 years after the event. Keeping something down for that long isn't good for you, but no-one gave a damn in the bad old days.
There was a chap we called "Tarzan" in our town when I was a kid. He lived rough, did odd jobs and was regarded as being as mad as a hatter. He was a First World War veteran who had cracked up in the trenches.
Then there's a young friend of ours who was one of the Paras blown up by the IRA - in the second truck that came to the aid of the first. Invalided out after his physical injuries healed, he used to scream in his sleep and often wet the bed. He's no better now than he was a year after it happened.
Mr C Hinecap
6th Aug 2007, 10:08
Blacksheep - as someone who believes his grandfather had suffered some form of PTSD, I was about to wade in to your penultimate post. I then read your last post and I am utterly at odds as to why you posted that guff up there?
Confused :confused:
This, from Robert Gates, is humbling. But more than that, it shows how expressing oneself nowadays is so much more acceptable and almost encouraged.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oz2Jr0BFuO0
As an aside (and I'm loathe to generalise), it might be nice if George Bush attended the funeral of at least one of the men who died for his country. And I don't want to hear any knobbish arguement about images of it being picked up for propaganda purposes. I don't care about that. He would do well to show a similar level of humility as Gates. Perhaps if the troops felt a little less like pariahs, we wouldn't get so many problems.
SirToppam,
Some years ago I worked with a chap whose father was a regular NCO with a West Country Regiment serving with the BEF in France. Following the retreat from Dunkirk his father was posted missing, as a small child his memory is being immediatly evicted from the Married Quarters in Exeter with his mother and other children. Some weeks later his father surfaced and made his way back home, the family were then permitted back to the Married Quarters. This left him with a life long jaundiced impression of the Military.
Rather a thread creep, the Merchant Seamen serving on the Atlantic convoys during WW2 had a raw deal, if their ship was sunk, the pay stopped immediatly, this meant any time in hospital or recovering was unpaid.
Best regards,
om15
Blacksheep
7th Aug 2007, 05:09
....I am utterly at odds as to why you posted that guff up there?
I'm a natural born cynic and I'm just sh*t stirring again as usual.
After the trenches and WW2 where the order of the day was to tie sufferers to a post and shoot them at dawn, we moved on to Korea, the Malayan jungles, Radfan, Mau-Mau, EOKA, IRA, the Falklands and GW1 etc. Then we suddenly discover post traumatic stress disorder and the psychological effects of overstretch. Well its not before time is what I'm thinking.
Then we suddenly discover post traumatic stress disorder...... Well its not before time is what I'm thinking.
.
and penicillin, why the hell didn't they discover that earlier, we could have saved millions of people :rolleyes:
Tragic Rug
7th Aug 2007, 07:31
Blacksheep. I suggest you take a look at a book called 'A War of Nerves: Soldiers and Psychiatrists in the Twentieth Century' by Ben Shephard. Very interesting read and it even manages to address some of the questions you raise.
e.g. It begins at the chronological intersection of modern warfare and psychological medicine during the Great War and examines this troubled marriage through the periods of shell-shock (World War I), combat fatigue (World War II), and post-traumatic stress disorder (Vietnam, Falkland campaign, and the Gulf War).