Abstract

Military service can place personnel at a greater risk of developing mental health issues yet both serving personnel and military veterans are reluctant to seek help for mental health issues. Delay in seeking support for mental health distress can result in reduced quality of life as well as a worse treatment prognosis. This research aims to explore the barriers and facilitators to care for the UK veteran population, identifying the relationship between these factors and help seeking behaviour.

Sixty- two in-depth qualitative interviews were conducted with male UK military veterans who had left the Armed Forces in the last five years and screened positive for a degree of mental health distress on self-report questionnaires covering common mental disorders (anxiety or depression), post-traumatic stress disorder or alcohol misuse. Thematic analysis was utilised to identify core themes which were developed into an illustrative journey to mental health support, outlining the key stages through which a veteran may travel on their journey to engaging in effective mental health treatment.

Veterans’ decision to seek care was mainly concentrated on the perceived need for treatment. Those not in mental health treatment failed to identify problems they were having as being indicative of a ‘mental health disorder’ as they had not yet reached a crisis point where they could no longer cope. Those veterans who were in mental health treatment typically had reached a point where the severity of their condition meant that their need for treatment was highlighted regardless of their intention, either due to a crisis event or to another’s intervention.

Interventions are needed to target early identification and management of mental health distress and encourage veterans to seek support before reaching a crisis event. The implications for this research to other high stress, masculine occupations will be explored within the talk.