Veterans
18
D2DI: What are the effects of PTSD on veterans?
Emma: PTSD is really complex and medically controversial because it is the only diagnosable thing that has something like 100 symptoms. From a point of view of the lads I speak to; that is flashbacks, dreams, it tends to be loud noises. I’ve been in interviews before and dropped a pen and the interviewee has jumped under the desk and spent the rest of that interview under the desk because they didn’t expect that. Things like bonfire night, New Years Eve, fireworks are a nightmare. I have been in situations where I’ve been having a cigarette outside with them because they have got upset and needed a break and somebody has started a motorbike behind them and that’s their guard gone. I would say they are extra vigilant. I have been in situations where an individual has walked into a room and started tapping the walls making sure they weren’t bugged before they sat down. In terms of the effects that I have seen, - not talking from a psychologist’s point of view - they are very, very aware, hyper-vigilant. They will scan open grounds; so if you walked into a park they would scan the ground for the quickest way out. It would be sort of noises, flashbacks, very, very bad dreams, some of them report that they woke up crying every day for five years but it stops once they have a cigarette and a coffee, it shows at different points of the day for different people. Another lad that I was speaking to is in prison now because he was playing Call of Duty, went to sleep, woke up a couple of hours later, doesn’t remember any of it, but had really hurt his partner. So we need to think about the power of those games, but as I say, they would be the main symptoms that I have seen.
D2DI: Have you ever worked with any special forces?
Emma: One
D2DI: Is it different for them than it is for the regular army?
Emma: It’s really difficult to comment on the Special Forces. They are trained in a different way, so PTSD doesn’t show in the same ways. Even Marines are different than the army, and not that they are better, they are different in the way that they view things so it’s really difficult when you talk about the Military, they are all so different. If you look at the prison statistics, we’ve got two in there from the RAF and 3 from the Navy, it is all army and a couple of Marines.
D2DI: They are the only ones that suffer?
Emma: They are the only ones that are committing crimes and are getting caught. If you think the Navy and the RAF aren’t engaging in the same combat, it doesn’t look the same in Afghanistan.
D2DI: What about hierarchy because we know the RAF are treated differently?
Emma: Well this is it, it’s very important to note that 10% of the prison population are saying they have got a military background, it’s huge. there are approx 89,000 in prison this morning. So if we’re looking at that, and obviously percentages are really variable, none of those are officers. This is not the officer’s class, so we have to be aware of that as well.
What we’ve got to remember is that if you’re still serving there’s a massive difference in what you get in your reviews whether veterans are still serving or not serving.
The veterans that are still serving, if they were to end up in court then an officer would go with them and would defend them;
so they would have legal representation from the force. Once
you leave the force, that is taken away from you. People always say that they don’t commit crimes until they leave, when in fact they do but they either commit them on a base and we don’t hear about them…
D2DI: In your opinion, should all mood-altering substances be band in the armed forces, this is including alcohol?
Emma: No. I don’t think you could get them to do the job that they do without that. How do you get people to run through nettles and jump through icy lakes with their tops off at 3 in the morning and go to war without 'a reward'…I know saying to them ‘your reward is alcohol’ is very wrong, but I just don’t know how they would be if you take that away.
D2DI: What would you replace it with?
Emma: For that sort of young lad, who has got a bit of money, I don’t know what you could replace it with. They do sign that they will not take drugs, in the military I’m not saying that drugs don’t exist, but for drinking, it’s how they cope and how they get them to do things. It’ll be like ‘run over there lads and there’s a bottle of whiskey waiting for you’. I’m not saying that that is right but I don’t think you would get the people we need to go to Afghanistan, that think in that way, that give up their lives in that way and also will think of alcohol as a reward because at that moment in time it isn’t a problem for them.
D2DI: You know the guys that you are working with most of the time, in the prisons, how have they come to leave the army, have they all had a similar dismissal? Does there seem to be a common tie with them?
"they are sent to
Cyprus to drink
alcohol"
Emma: 50% have been dishonourably discharged for their behaviour. So basically if you get probation in the army, they will stick by you but if you go into prison for something like over 6 weeks, they will not wait for you. So your position is gone and you’re dishonourably discharged. There is a lot of that, and there is also a lot of…’I left because I wanted to be there for my wife and kids’ and they are absolutely fine and then things start to unravel at that point because they are used to this drinking culture. They are used to a lot of respect, which they don’t get in society; they aren’t getting a job or any money. You know, they are used to this status and they just can’t get it and that starts to lead to and unravel from there. They say that PTSD in the forces takes 14 years to materialise but personally, from the lads that I have spoken to in Afghanistan; I don’t think it takes that long.
D2DI: I know a guy that had been to war and come home and started snorting cocaine because he couldn’t get the images out of his head…
Emma: Something to get across is that 92% of those leaving the forces are fine, in that they are not presenting themselves to agencies. So it is only 8%, but this makes 10% of the prison population. It’s still a lot of people but it means that the army can say that 92% of them are absolutely fine.
D2DI speaks to PHD LJMU Graduate Emma Murray researcher and project developer of the criminology of war.