Combat Stress is a charity based around the UK that supports veterans of the British Armed Forces with their mental health. They also offer support to non-operational reservists and former members of the Merchant Navy who have problems with their mental health.
Combat Sress’s History
The Ex-Servicemen’s Welfare Society was founded in 1919 to help veterans suffering from Mental health issues. They set up their first recuperative home in 1920. Then kept assisting veterans with their mental health till this day while expanding into a charity that helps veterans across the UK. They became known as Combat Stress in the 1980s, but legally they are still called the Ex-Servicemen’s Welfare Society.
What services does Combat stress provide?
Combat Stress aims to treat veterans’ symptoms and improve their quality of life. They want to help veterans take on their past and tackle the future.
Combat Stress offers a range of therapies, treatment programmes and supports to help veterans with their mental health issues.
They believe Everyone is unique, so their adept clinical teams will work
with you to find the support that is good for you. Combat Stress provides support to veterans through its services.
Helpline
The Combat Stress Helpline is available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. It is for Veterans, serving personnel, their families or carers if they feel they need support. The helpline has a team of specially-trained professionals that will provide free, confidential support and advice. They want to help you whether you are having trouble sleeping, having a tough time, experiencing flashbacks, feeling depressed, anxious, or needing help but don’t know why.
You can contact the helpline by calling, texting or emailing the helpline. Go to the Combat Stress charity’s website to find which helpline you should call.
What happens when you ring the helpline?
After calling the helpline number, you will hear a recorded message about confidentiality and then silence while your call is added to their call handling system. Then one of Combat Stress’ Helpline advisors will answer your call. If all their advisors are busy, you can either stay on hold or leave a message so they can call you back.
What support will you get from the helpline?
They will provide a listening ear and emotional support. If appropriate, the Helpline advisor can also refer you to their service for clinical treatment. They can also signpost you to other organisations that can help with welfare, housing, physical health and relationships.
What happens if you call them in a crisis?
They are open all day, every day, providing emotional support and advice, but they are not a crisis service. Suppose you call them and are in crisis. They will find someone who can help you, like the Samaritans or the Accident and Emergency department at your local hospital.
However, it is better to contact your GP, Samaritans, on 116 123 or dial 999 when you are in a crisis and need urgent help.
Treatment Programmes
Their specialist treatment is available through outpatient appointments, online, in the community, and, in some cases, residentially. They provide treatment across the United Kingdom and have treatment hubs in Northern Ireland, Scotland, Central, South and North England.
Treatment may include:
- Building resilience: enabling you to manage your mental health better and improve your quality of life by giving you the tools to do so.
- Managing the consequences of trauma: helps rebuild your self-esteem, particularly if you struggle with shame or guilt about your past. Other support includes helping you understand and manage your overwhelming emotions, such as fear or anger, or helping you if you feel ‘cut-off’ from your emotions.
- Looking to the future: this helps you find ways to spend your time on activities you believe are important, including relationships, leisure, work, life situations and your community.
- Trauma-focused therapy is a one-to-one specialist treatment that involves discussing your traumatic experiences. In a way that you find comfortable and can cope with to reduce your symptoms.
Peer Support
Veterans lead their Peer Support Service for veterans. So it brings former servicemen and women together so they can share and talk about their mental health issues and receive support and understanding from others who have been in a similar situation. As the service is run by veterans, who have all received treatment from Combat Stress so they can also explain and talk about how and what helped them.
Veterans can use Combat Stress’s Peer Support Service after their initial clinical assessment and subsequent acceptance into the treatment programme anytime. The Peer Support Service runs parallel to their clinical services. It provides a space or platform for veterans to meet, relate and support others in a similar position.
They usually hold one regular group meeting in person a month but also hold online meetings throughout the month. These meetings are held across the country.
To find out more about their Peer Support Service and how to access it, you can call, text or email their 24-hour helpline.
How do you get access to Combat Stress’s services?
Combat Stress’s services need you to go through three steps to access them. This is so they can confirm that you have the requirements to use their services and get enough information so they can treat you more effectively. They call these three steps the Veteran’s Journey, and it goes.
STEP 1: Referral
The first step needs you to contact their free 24-hour helpline by calling, texting or emailing.
When you have contacted the helpline, you will speak to an advisor who will ask you questions. These questions will be about your military service and what areas of your life you are having difficulty with, particularly mental health but also occupation, housing, finances, etc.
STEP 2:Assessment
Their team of mental health specialists will review your referral. If they believe they can offer services that might be suitable for you, they will ask you to attend an assessment with a team member to discuss your issues. However, sometimes there might be other services they believe are better suited to help you. In these cases, their team will work with that better-suited service to help you access the treatment you need.
STEP 3:Treatment
Suppose they have assessed that they can provide services suitable for you. In that case, they will design a personalised treatment pathway for you. This treatment pathway will include treatment modules delivered by their Clinical teams to help you with your mental health. Your treatment pathway might consist of modules from the following treatment packages: Managing the Consequences of Trauma, Trauma-Focused Therapy, Building Resilience and Manage Better and Looking to the future.
Who can Combat Stress treat?
They offer treatment to veterans of the UK Armed Forces, non-operational reservists and former members of the Merchant Navy.
To get treatment, you also have to live in the UK and be registered with a UK GP. You also need to have complex trauma-related or stress-related mental health problems resulting from military services, such as:
- Depression
- PTSD
- Anxiety
- Complex-PTSD (this is PTSD with some specific other difficulties)
They can not treat veterans who:
- currently have difficulties that severely affect their relationships with others
- Are experiencing severe psychotic symptoms
- currently are experiencing a crisis, whether mental or physical
- Are at high risk, whether it be feeling suicidal, self-harm or risk of causing harm to others
They also can not treat veterans with mental health problems resulting from trauma or adverse life events that did not happen during their military service, e.g. childhood trauma.
How else does Combat Stress help?
Combat Stress tries to help veterans and their families to the best of their ability, so they use and try different methods to do so. Not only do they use the peer support service to let veterans help veterans. But they also have a group of veterans that help give their perspective on how Combat Stress should operate called the National Veterans Voice. This group has been involved in how the charity works in many ways, including recruitment, content creation for the online self-help resources, redesign of art therapy materials, and new treatment programmes.
Combat stress also helps veterans by conducting their own research to ensure they deliver the best possible services for their veterans. Combat Stress are committed to publishing its research as part of its commitment to contribute to the advancement of the veteran mental health field. They also work closely with Kings Centre for Military Health Research at Kings College, London, to ensure their research is of the highest standards.
Combat Stress also helps veterans through their self-help guides developed by specialist mental health clinicians working in collaboration with veterans. Combat Stress designed, developed and created these self-help guides to provide guidance and support to former servicemen and women experiencing mental health issues. They also have a self-help guide for Family members of veterans.
