Trauma, just a click away

Trauma, just a click away
Treating the psychological scars of war like whiplash is an insult to the soldiers marked by their service


Ros Wynne-Jones guardian.co.uk, Sunday 26 July 2009 23.00 BST

Andrew Watson, the 25-year-old former private in the Logistics Corps, who jumped to his death 10 days ago, never really left Basra. Traumatised by the memory of retrieving the bodies of two colleagues he had seen blown up by a mine, and by the experience of removing dead babies from bombed buildings, he was already dead to the world when he came back from Iraq, his mother said.

Suffering from undiagnosed post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), one of his last acts was to stand in front of the television at his home in London saluting the parade of flag-draped military coffins as they passed through the market town of Wootton Bassett.

Andrew Watson died at Kings College Hospital – a cruel irony given that just a stone's throw away is a world-class unit for the treatment of PTSD – the Centre for Anxiety Disorders and Trauma. I was treated there in 2000, after reporting from the scene of a civilian massacre in East Timor had left me unable to sleep, eat or leave the house, my once active life reduced to the brief respites between flashbacks and panic attacks. The treatment gave me my life back.
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Trauma, just a click away