16.2 |
Support for injured Service Personnel
and veterans
102.
Secondary
objectives included:
•
to compare
the health of Regular and Reservist Personnel; and
•
to assess
risk-taking behaviours (alcohol consumption and risky driving)
in
personnel
deployed on Op TELIC.
103.
In December
2003, the MOD published a report on lessons it had drawn
from
operations
in Iraq.70
The report
provided a brief update on the King’s College work,
and concluded
that “to date, we are not aware of any unusual pattern of
ill-health in
returning
personnel”.
104.
The initial
findings of the King’s College research were published in May
2006.
The MOD
completed its Over-Arching Review of Operational Stress
Management
(OROSM) in
September 2004, and a second phase covering Training
and
Communications
Strategies in April 2005.
The OROSM
defined six steps in operational stress management:
•
pre-service
entry beliefs and attitudes;
•
in-service
training and promotion courses for career development;
•
pre-deployment;
•
operational
deployment;
•
post-operational
recovery; and
•
on discharge
from the Armed Forces.
Implementation
and delivery of operational stress management within that
framework
remained
the responsibility of the individual Services.
The OROSM
clearly identified operational stress management as a management,
rather
than a
medical, responsibility.
105.
Over the
course of Op TELIC, in addition to the requirement for a period
of
“normalisation”
at the end of an operational tour, commanders increasingly opted
for
their units
to undertake a formal period of decompression at the end of an
operational
tour, as
part of post-operational stress management.71
106.
Decompression
involved “placing groups into a structured and – critically
–
monitored
environment in which to begin winding down and rehabilitating to a
normal,
routine,
peacetime environment”. Any individual considered to be vulnerable
to any form
70
Ministry of
Defence, Operations
in Iraq: Lessons for the Future, December
2003.
71
Minute
DCDS(Pers) to VCDS, July 2007, ‘Decompression’.
59