Former soldiers share the pain of readjusting to 'normal' life after war.

The ANZAC Day motto ‘lest we forget’ is a very powerful phrase, but it takes on an all new potency when we remember that many soldiers literally cannot escape their memories of war.

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is common in soldiers who return from war. 11 – 20 of every 100 soldiers who have returned from serving in Afghanistan are currently living with with the condition.

Tyson Murray who served in Afghanistan says that number of soldiers who live with PTSD might be even higher than the numbers suggest because many soldiers suppress their mental health issues so they can be deployed again.

Listen to Meshel Laurie discussing PTSD with Tyson Murray. 

“If [all soldiers] were honest with the army psychologist, they’d probably put us all in padded cells,” Murray said. 

While on the ground in Afghanistan in 2010, a blast killed two of Murray’s fellow soldiers and he didn’t have time to grieve.

“You don’t have time to mourn or really accept what’s happened,” Murray said. “You’re operating at an intensity and a level that’s high that your emotions and your mind don’t really have time to catch-up with what’s happened.”

It wasn't Murray returned to Australia in 2012 that he began to experience symptoms of PTSD. Desperate to be deployed again, he suppressed his feelings even further.

Murray now admits this was very dangerous.

"The longer you suppress something that needs to be released, the more destructive it can be when it finally comes out," Murray said. 

When Murray returned from his second stint in Afghanistan, his symptoms of PTSD returned - extreme irritability, sadness and "adjustment issues."

“[When you're without] your mates [and] no longer doing the job you love...sometimes you feel depressed because you’re having these feelings and emotions and that’s when you start to self-medicate and that’s never good thing for anyone and being soldiers, our first point of call is usually alcohol,” Murray said. 

Murray self-medicated with alcohol, party drugs and high-risk behaviours in an attempt to just "feel something." Two relationships fell apart due to his behaviour and he eventually had a mental breakdown.

As a result, Murray found himself in hospital and on medication for his PTSD.

"That’s when [the] army came out and said ‘well your doctors are pretty confident you’re not going to recover to a deployable state again so you’ll be medicated downgraded and dismissed from the army,'” Murray said.

Murray describes the day he was told he wouldn't be deployed again as "heartbreaking." He is certain that if mental health issues were less stigmatised, he could have gotten the help he needed earlier and been able to return to service.

“I think the best thing that [the Army] can do in regards to mental health is [to] let the soldiers know that everyone is going to have adjustment issues and that’s all right,” Murray said. 

“Blokes with PTSD aren’t broken. They just need time to find their feet and re-adjust.”

Tyson Murray now volunteers for Mates4Mates, a network that supports the mental and physical health of service people who have returned from war.

Listen to Mia Freedman, Monique Bowley and Susan Carland discuss the modern-day significance of ANZAC Day on the latest episode of Mamamia Outloud:

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