Please help PTSD veterans, Harry
Iraq hero’s plea to prince after compo battle with Army 22,000 on Prozac in the forces
“I’ve met him on three occasions and each time I meet him I tell him that more needs to be done for soldiers with mental health problems.
“When I tell him about the issues with mental health, Harry nods, asks me how my family are doing but that’s about it.
“I don’t know if he feels constrained and can’t really speak his mind but something needs to change.”
The Duke of Sussex, a former Army captain who served in Afghanistan, has been a passionate mental health campaigner and praised the All Call Signs group which helps mentally ill troops. Jason, 45, joined the Royal
Engineers in 1993 and served for 21 years, i ncluding combat in Iraq and t hree t ours of
Northern Ireland.
In 2006 a suicide bomber blew up his patrol i n Basra, l eaving him with burns and shrapnel wounds. The following day he was flown back to a UK hospital for treatment. I arrived in accident and emergency i n my blood-soaked Army uniform with two plastic bags on my hands,” he said. “I had to sit with memMORE than 22,000 personnel have been prescribed antidepressants in the last three years.
The number taking the drugs has grown each year since 2016.
Ministry of Defence stats for 2018 show 7,537 troops had them – around 1 in 20 of the armed forces.
The number of officers on them rose 16 per cent in three years from 705 to 840.
Troops got Prozac to help cope with a range of illness from PTSD to physical injuries.
Wayne Owers, a highly decorated former Army major and bomb disposal officer, was prescribed antidepressants for PTSD.
He said: “The MOD dishes out antidepressants far too easily. My dose was increased three times because my body just got used to them.
Aggressive
“I would spend whole days feeling very dozy or asleep even though I had told the medics that my PTSD was worse when I was asleep because I suffered from night terrors. My condition only began to improve after I took myself off them. I have been off them ever since and I can cope very well.”
Experts warn against overuse of the drugs because of the suicide risk.
A 2016 analysis of 18,000 people on antidepressants found they doubled the risk of suicide and aggressive behaviour in under-18s.
The increase in prescriptions coincided with an armed forces report which claimed morale had slumped to a tenyear low.
In 2018 at least 20 soldiers and serving members of the military are believed to have committed suicide.