Combat Stress Ex-Services Mental Welfare Society
Welfare and Treatment of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
Our history
The Society was founded in 1919, one year after the end of the First World War, since when it has helped over 85,000 veterans cope with their suffering. Currently, there are over 7000 veterans being helped, with many new referrals.
When it formed, the Society was, in many ways, ahead of its time. The attitude to mental welfare was, by today's standards, primitive, even barbaric, and nowhere more so than in our Armed Services. Those who suffered from mental breakdown during their Service life received little or no sympathy. Indeed, during the First World War, if it led to a failure to obey orders, death by firing squad was always a possibility. At the end of the war there were literally thousands of men returning from the Western Front or from sea suffering from shell shock to be demobilised for whom little help existed. Indeed, about the only recourse that was available was to lock these men up in lunatic asylums, which was completely inappropriate.
The Society's view was that these men could be helped to cope with their condition through a rehabilitation programme that aimed to train them so that they could go back into full time employment, and set about providing this training in a factory setting. Well, things have moved on quite a lot since those early days, and the way in which the Society provides care for the veteran today reflects modern clinical practice and its work is carried out, thankfully, against a background of a much greater understanding of mental illness, and of the risk of psychological damage to which service men and women can be exposed during the course of their service.
The veterans we care for suffer from a variety of psychological problems such as combat related Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). PTSD is now a recognised medical condition and Combat Stress specialises in providing treatment to veterans suffering from this damaging illness.