Many advances in mental healthcare have been achieved as a result of the traumas suffered by military personnel during and after war service, Australia’s defence force chief has said.
Delivering the Order of Australia Oration in Canberra on Monday night, Air Chief Marshal Mark Binskin spoke of advances in understanding that had evolved since the shameful treatment of first and second world war veterans.
Many who suffered shell shock and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) had been viewed as having disciplinary problems rather than mental illnesses requiring treatment, he said.
It was believed sufferers lacked the willpower to manage fear in battle, Binksin said, and returned soldiers were often institutionalised, with their families unable to care for them.
Mental-health funding was non-existent during the great depression and the second world war, he said, while the substandard and often horrific conditions institutionalised soldiers with mental illness endured only added to the stigma of mental illness.
“Australia owes many of its advances in mental health to the psychological casualties among those who returned from the first and second world wars and the increased demand for more effective care,” Binskin said.
The Vietnam veterans who came after them were predominantly reviled rather than celebrated, he said, when it was still believed a veteran’s mental-health issues must have arisen from a pre-existing condition rather than from trauma experienced in service.
Vietnam triggered a new wave of studies into military mental health too numerous and too complex for me to adequately address in this forum,” Binskin said.
One of those studies found that over a 43-year period, 47.9% of those who served in Vietnam had an accepted claim for a mental-health condition, he said.
“For me, that figure underscores the critical importance of ensuring we provide first-class mental health care for every person who serves under my command,” Binskin said.
“And our experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan are the driver behind our determination to more fully understand all factors that impact on the mental health of our people.”
With Australian forces recently returning to Iraq, Binskin highlighted the importance of resilience training to help people cope better with the unique risks of military service. The number of mental-health workers in defence had doubled in the past six years, he said.
“We are acutely aware that one of the major barriers preventing people from seeking treatment is the misbelief that a diagnosis of a mental-health disorder such as PTSD will mean the end of their career in the Australian Defence Force,” he said.
“Unfortunately, the problem is that the longer someone hides their symptoms and avoids treatment, the greater the risk for this to occur … If the Vietnam war has taught us anything, it is that the health and wellbeing of our people is paramount and there is no place for politics or point scoring from anyone in dealing with military and veteran mental health.”
He spoke of the need to be more responsive to the mental health needs of personnel and their families, and of encouraging them to seek help as early as possible.
At no other time in the history of defence had so many resources been allocated to improving mental health, he said. But more funding was still vital.
“This issue is bigger than us,” Binskin said. “It is a community issue. Our first responders, police, ambulance and emergency service personnel are suffering too and Australia must accept that when we ask ordinary people to do extraordinary things on our behalf we owe them a duty of care.
“But more than that, we owe them a debt of gratitude and compassion. There is no shame in seeking help and until we, as a community, change our thinking to accept and acknowledge that – even the best mental-health treatment programs in the world will fail because this is an issue for our nation, not just those we rely on to protect us.”
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