Mental Health Services: Veterans

(asked on 17th July 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent assessment he has made of the potential effect of recording of veteran suicide on the ability to tailor mental health services to ex-service personnel.


Answered by
Nadine Dorries Portrait
Nadine Dorries
This question was answered on 29th July 2020

Veteran mental health needs are very often no different to those of the general population. Research shows that suicide amongst former members of the Armed Forces remains extremely rare and is lower than comparative rates in the civilian population. The recording of suicides is a matter for coroners and recording of prior service is unlikely to help in attribution of cause of these tragic events.

The National Health Service in England has set up two tailored veterans’ mental health services: the Transition, Intervention and Liaison Service and the Complex Treatment Service. These services benefit from over £10 million per year investment and have collectively received over 10,000 referrals up to the end of 2019. A third tailored service, the forthcoming Veterans’ Mental Health High Intensity Service, will see even more investment and will provide crisis care and therapeutic inpatient support for those veterans who need urgent and emergency care.

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