PTSD: "It's like a tornado going through a quiet town."

Living with post traumatic stress – a Hull soldier's story
By Hull Daily Mail
Posted: March 25, 2016

The condition's impact on his day-to-day life has been wide and varied. He suffers from flashbacks, sleeplessness and occasional involuntary fits of rage. . he says, trying to explain its nature.

SCOTT Moore's voice trembles slightly as he describes an ordeal that began almost two decades ago.

The 42-year-old from west Hull is a former soldier in the Yorkshire Regiment who served in Bosnia and Northern Ireland in the 1990s and he suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

It is a condition that has cost him two marriages, a livelihood and even his enjoyment of New Year's Eve.

Even more seriously, in November 2014, it led to him attempting to take his own life.

"I'd just had enough," he says. "I went and got the drugs I needed – I knew exactly what I was doing and what it would take to kill me."

Indeed, as doctors would tell him later, he had taken enough medication to kill ten men.

But he did wake up, and was informed by medics at Hull Royal Infirmary that his lengthy prescription of drugs to heal his physical pain had saved him.

"Because I was taking so many painkillers I'd become immunised to them," Scott says.

Scott is far from alone in his suffering. A report commissioned by veterans' charity Help For Heroes last November estimated more than 61,000 former soldiers suffer from mental health problems after they leave the Forces.

It was the second time Scott had attempted to take his own life. The first had been in 1998 when he was still serving. Within a year he left active service.
read more here