Beating Combat Stress: 101 Techniques for Recovery

By John Henden

Beating Combat Stress is a one-stop handbook of field-tested techniques and strategies to help service personnel, veterans and professionals to deal with the psychological effects of combat.

• Features 101 field-tested techniques and strategies for managing combat-related stress
• Designed to be accessible and useful both to serving personnel and veterans, and to the professionals and volunteers who are engaged in helping them
• Takes a solution-focused approach to dealing with combat-related problems, promoting simplicity and proven techniques over complex theories and psychological jargon
• User-friendly style and layout, with specially-commissioned illustrations throughout

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wiley
• Release date: Jun 1, 2011
• ISBN: 9781119996118

Book preview

Acknowledgements

I would like, first, to acknowledge Royal Marine WO1 Ian Robbins, who several years ago encouraged me to develop a two-day training package to equip military welfare workers better in their work with personnel returning from operational theatre. Without delivering these many workshops across all the armed services, and the many conversations and discussions which were had, this handbook might not have been written.

I am grateful, too, to Gail Morris of the Army Welfare Service, whom I have known in her various capacities within that valued service, over the past 10 years or so. At a difficult stage in the development of the handbook, she was able to provide suggestions and ideas to give the project renewed life, and to ensure its publication.

I want to thank Darren Reed, Commissioning Editor of Wiley-Blackwell, who listened with great interest to my original ideas for this book and, believing it to be a virtuous project, gave me appropriate guidance along the way.

My thanks go, too, to David and Pat Hopewell, who were kind in letting me use their Bristol flat, with inspirational views across the city and the hills of North Somerset beyond. Most of the manuscript was written there, over several stays.

I am grateful, as ever, to my wife Lynn who has been very understanding of my need to go away and write. She has on many occasions been most patient in her role as wordsmith’s widow.

I am grateful to Dr Alasdair Macdonald for his encouragement and support with this project, over some three or four years. This came first in the form of enlightening articles, and then in the form of useful books loaned. Latterly, help with the research base for solution-focused brief therapy (SFBT), as outlined in Appendix A, was much appreciated.

I would like to thank Dr Harry Procter for casting his eye over later drafts of the manuscript, and for making some useful suggestions on both design and content. His quick grasp of both structure and content, and his clarity of thinking, are always appreciated.

My search for an illustrator ended when I remembered Keith Rainer, who had helped me with a previous important project. Thanks, Keith, for all the drawings provided for the various sections within the book.

The person to whom I reserve my deepest gratitude for, in putting the whole handbook together, is Alison Wright, my secretary. She has steadily and patiently word-processed each redrafting of the manuscript over many months. A big thank you for this sterling work.

Finally, I would like to thank the many serving service personnel and veterans, whom I have worked with over many years, both in a personal and a professional capacity. Also, I am grateful to the many civilian clients who have survived road traffic accidents (RTAs), near-death experiences, armed robberies and other traumatic events. It is on both military and civilian clients that the tools and techniques in this handbook have been field-tested, by me and others over many years, with both encouraging and amazing