• L A van Hoorn, N Jones, W Busuttil, N T Fear, S Wessely, E Hunt, and N Greenberg.
• King's Centre for Military Health Research, Institute of Psychiatry, London SE5 9RW, UK. lucy_vanhoorn@hotmail.co.uk
• Occup Med (Lond). 2013 Apr 1; 63 (3): 238-41.

BackgroundRecently, proposals have been made to improve mental health care for U.K. military veterans. Combat stress (CS), a veteran's charity, has provided mental health services for veterans since 1919. Since 2003, service users have included veterans from the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts; however, their pattern of help-seeking has not been evaluated.AimsTo describe the characteristics of the veteran population of the recent Iraq or Afghanistan conflicts who sought help from CS between 2003 and May 2011.MethodsCS Iraq and Afghanistan veteran clinical and welfare records were evaluated.ResultsNine hundred and eighty-eight records were evaluated. The median time for veterans of recent conflicts to seek help from CS since discharge from military service was ~2 years, considerably shorter than the mean time of 14 years previously estimated by CS. Approximately, three-quarters of the veterans receiving a full clinical assessment (n = 114), received a diagnosis of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) (n = 87). Approximately half of the clinically assessed veterans self-referred to CS (51%); their most frequent diagnosis was PTSD.ConclusionsVeterans who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan are presenting to Combat stress sooner, and at a younger age, than veterans of previous conflicts and operations.

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