Wounded Spirit

Wounded Spirit works with Australian Defence Force veterans whose Defence service may have led to mental health issues with a spiritual or faith basis. It’s not just for veterans it’s also their key supporters, friends, families and the medical, social and spiritual teams who support them. Wounded Spirit is a multi-faith non-denomination volunteer group. How, when, where or if veterans worship is their call – we don’t judge and respect their rights and beliefs. Likewise, whether a veteran are lapsed or active doesn’t matter to us. The fact that a veteran or a key supporter is reading this now says that there is something in their faith or spiritual relationship that they are concerned or at least curious about. Belatedly, we are starting to understand that the service provided by our Soldiers, Sailors or Airmen/women comes at a terrible cost and is leading to some significant mental health issues within our veteran community. Preliminary evidence indicates that within the approximately 36,000 personnel who deployed to the Iraq and Afghanistan operational areas, somewhere between 8-13% will suffer from some form of service related mental illness . Assuming a simple average of 10%, this would indicate that approximately 3600 veterans may eventually be effected. Additionally, figures from the Department of Veterans Affairs (DVA) cite that the net total of veterans from all Australian conflicts is approximately 301,200 and as such this may mean there may be over 30,000 veterans living within the community that have or may develop some form of service related mental illness such as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). There is strong evidence to suggest that a component of these mental illnesses is caused by spiritual or faith based issues. Disappointingly, this is not yet being addressed by agencies such as DVA or the mainstream faith based organisations.