An Iraq war veteran from Kent said he would have lost everything if he had not sought help for his post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Simon Stanley, from Canterbury, said the condition left him “angry about everything”.
He received help from the veterans organization Combat Stress.
According to the organization, the number of people seeking help for mental health problems has increased by 44% since 2021.
Mr Stanley served in the Army for 18 years, serving in Cyprus and Northern Ireland before being deployed to Iraq in 2003.
It was his experiences there that affected him deeply.
He said, “What bothered me most was seeing civilians who were injured or in distress, and I couldn’t do anything about it.”
However, it took another decade after he left the military before he sought help.
“Everything was just confrontational,” he said. “I was angry about everything, I lost my temper at the slightest thing.
“One of my best friends said to me, ‘You need to get help, you need to see someone, you’re never happy, you’re always angry, you’re always frustrated, you don’t want to interact with people, you’re not the Simon I knew five or six years ago.’
“I thought I was going to lose my family and I thought I was going to lose everything I had.”
According to Robert Marsh of Combat Stress, it takes an average of 13 years for veterans to seek help for conditions like PTSD.
He said: “Combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan ended more than a decade ago. We are now seeing the rest of the veterans looking for support.”
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