To have a problem with the covid-19 outbreak to be likened to war?

[casualmum]

I was watching BBC news this morning and a health service adviser appeared saying that front-line NHS staff working Coronavirus should have the same psychological services available to them as soldiers coming back from war.
Talking about this with my husband, he was deeply offended. As he works within the armed forced and is from a family with an army background, he knows many people, family and friends who are still suffering from PTSD from wars and conflicts which happened years ago. Yet, a large number of them have not had the long term support they require.
I understand and respect every NHS worker risking their lives everyday to save others, but surely this is something that they should be trained to deal with. My brother has worked for the NHS for around ten years now and has become desensitised to most things a normal person would find traumatic. Yes, different people have different limits into what they find traumatic and different people have different ways of coping. But to me, there is a large difference between seeing someone die in a hospital bed, to seeing someone you work with being blown up or shot.
I'm sure the increase of patients is overwhelming for NHS staff at the moment, which can't be helped by a decline in staff. I can only imagine how overwhelmed NHS workers must feel, but to raise their hopes with psychological services that are supposed to be available to them after this pandemic has calmed down not only seems unfair to them, but unfair to the soldiers all around our country who have not received any kind of help from our government.

AIBU?

It’s not about encountering death. It’s the fear of putting yourself and those you love at risk because of your job.
It’s seeing six people dying within ten minutes, in a care home.
It’s not being able comfort someone who is terrified and can’t have their family with them
It’s knowing you haven’t been given adequate protection but you get a bloody clap.

@happyhammy

I really wish I could! I've looked into it, but there are no volunteer opportunities in my local hospital at the moment. I'm also afraid my work hours wouldn't be flexible enough :(

Ok, so your DH is offended that nurses might be able to access mental health support, just because some of his colleagues couldn't? Really??

And how do you suppose we should be trained to deal with this level of pain and suffering, having to constantly be the one to hold a dying persons hand because their family cannot be there, the worry of unknowingly spreading this virus to other patients or our families. I must have missed that class!

Lets acknowledge what nurses are going though without fear of upsetting someone who reckons they have had it worse It really shouldn't be a race to the bottom.

My brother has worked for the NHS for around ten years now and has become desensitised to most things a normal person would find traumatic

This is quite unusual and thankfully not the norm. All nurses that I know are naturally very caring people and certainly are not desensitised. Perhaps this is just bravado on his part? I am now a midwife and still cry everytime I deliver a baby who has sadly passed away. I cry whilst washing them, weighing and measuring them and dressing them. I handle them as gently and as lovingly as humanly possible. The day I become desensitised to that is the day I will know I need to leave midwifery.

Personally feel everyone has right for psychological support - agree hospital shouldn’t be compared to war zone or medical staff compared to military.
I can tell you some of the experiences as a frontline doctor I have experienced in last 24y are horrific and I will never forget. I strongly believe all medical staff/ students should be taught and have access to psychological therapies.

@privated00r

We were both offended that these services are being treated like they can be available for anyone, when in reality these services can't and haven't been readily available for years. I wish that everyone who needed it could get the mental health support they need, no matter their profession. You would know that the NHS is underfunded and support cannot realistically be handed out to anyone that wants or needs it unfortunately. For a health service adviser to say that they will provide NHS staff with the same psychological services that the army have seems deeply offensive to both parties.

I don’t think it’s a bad analogy. We need to pull together and people need to accept that there is more risk in general life than there was previously (especially the teaching unions).

However, the enemy is possibly more reasonable and understandable than the average dictator.

You would know that the NHS is underfunded and support cannot realistically be handed out to anyone that wants or needs it unfortunately. For a health service adviser to say that they will provide NHS staff with the same psychological services that the army have seems deeply offensive to both parties.

Then take it up with the army. There's no need to be offended and think it should be a race to the bottom.

The NHS has a duty of care to their staff, and if they don't prioritise their mental health after this then their staff won't be any help to anyone else. Nurses and doctors could never have seen working in a situation where they were expected to put their lives on the lines, in many cases to be living away from their families, and to see so many people die in such a short space of time.

@lyralalala
Take it up with the army? Please tell me how I can do that - we've been trying for years!
And like i said previously, I'm not saying one is worse than the other - I'm saying the armed forces have not been receiving support for years now and promising NHS staff the same kind of psychological support as soldiers coming back from war is strange.

I hate it too. Al this blitz spirit bollocks.is just propaganda to keep us in our place and make us comply.

What they promise and what is realistically deliverable are two very different things.

I see two points to your question.

1. YABU to have a problem in comparing COVID19 to war. The response the country has had to mount in response to this war like, it is affecting everyone at every level - those directly involved in healthcare, those involved in supply and support to healthcare and even those not remotely involved in healthcare. That and the fact that it involves every other country in the world and all that that means, to me, makes the analogy relevant.

1. YABVVU to deride the need for healthcare workers to have access to mental health support. As others have said - this is not a competition as to who needs it the most and I can assure you neither healthcare or defence have adequate access to the support that is necessary. The most recent Middle East conflicts brought many empty promises and I have no reason to believe that these ones will be any more meaningful.

I have a loved one who is ex military and ex medical. With extensive frontline experience in both fields. They have PTSD. Was discharged from the military without any support and a failure to diagnose a serious and life changing illness - with dire consequences. Subsequent service as frontline NHS has also caused/exacerbated PTSD. On approaching military charity for support and intervention was told that they did not "fit the criteria" because the recent nightmares and panic attacks were medical workplace based and therefore the PTSD was "not military". Support was denied. This is despite a previous diagnosis from military days. Was told to access services through current NHS employer. Was told by Human Resources manager that she did not "believe" PTSD was real. There was no support services in place by employer. Loved one fell through the cracks and is now not able to work due to complex medical and mental health issues.

I will leave you this screenshot taken from BBC's Ambulance. It struck a chord with me.

OP. Have you looked at Help The Heroes and Combat Stress for support for your family mrmber.

Trauma is trauma and it's all relative. If nhs and other people have experienced an event that they have found traumatic then they should have support. The army were probably more equipped to deal with war, and better funded than nhs staff have been, who haven't been trained to deal with this situation. It's not a top trumps situation.

Yabvu. Nhs staff that choose to go into roles where higher fatalities are more common do so with their eyes open and some mental preparation/ training to go with it. And eg a specialist in bowel cancer doesn't have the added strain of worrying about whether they'll catch it from a patient or pass it to a loved one. Nor do we expect those providing end of life care to automatically take on the strain of standing in for loved ones when the patient is dying.

Completely different to what is being asked of frontline covid staff. And it must be incredibly damaging for staff in other areas, knowing they have patients they could be saving or helping, but instead they are looking at empty wards and know the inaction is reducing outcomes.

You sound like an unempathic bellend 😒

YANBU to dislike the terms, but YABVU for your reasons. I don’t like it them using the term “war,” and “warriors,” and all the language but not for the same reasons as you at all. I think it’s because that language covers up a multitude of sins. I saw someone on Twitter (I should have bookmarked it) put it really well that Trump in particular was calling it a war so then when he was letting doctors and nurses die by the handfuls, it wasn’t government negligence murdering them; they would be “heroes” and “casualties of war.” Of course, they’re still heroes, but they’re heroes for the sheer bravery in the face of the terror they must have felt, facing these things despite government ineptitude. And unfortunately yes, that bit is a little like war in that it’s plenty to cause trauma and PTSD.

But absolutely a little louder for the people in the back: NHS workers who have died. They are NOT casualties of war. We cannot and should not allow politicians to just write them off with war language, as “heroes of the war in COVID-19,” with a tear in their eyes. No. They were murdered by a government who didn’t give them enough personal protective equipment, absolutely end of. We don’t send soldiers out there without ammunition. If this were any system but the NHS, the lawsuits by broken-hearted families would be astronomically expensive, and maybe we’ll still see that.

One thing you got absolutely right is that our armed forces don’t get the support they need, and an absolutely shocking number end up with PTSD and can get no help. I’m afraid this is going to end up being the most similar to “war,” in that way: a bunch of trained professionals who cannot get the support they need and a shocking number end up with PTSD. They’re not just facing their own deaths, the deaths of collègues, the deaths of a shocking number of patients (doctors and nurses who previously felt confident in their abilities to “tell” if a person can survive say that coronavirus completely strips them of that knowledge; someone can appear to improve and be dead in hours, so they are unable to reassure families, they return to shifts to find improving patients suddenly dead, and on and on).

No, it’s nothing like war. They did not sign up to face death from every direction during a global pandemic. My husband says when he signed up for the armed forces, he knew exactly what he’d probably be facing, including many deaths, and he still struggled afterwards.

YABU. People can get PTSD for many reasons. I don't want to be harsh but soldiers don't have the monopoly on it. I have a friend who suffered PTSD as a result of a horrible case she worked on as a police officer. The things she would say remind me of what I've seen soldiers saying about their experiences, such as not being able to get rid of the image of someone lying in pain. It's a horrible and life destroying thing. I think there will be many medical staff suffering and I hope lots of the money raised recently will go to help them.