Mental health researchers ‘excluded’ from PTSD policy

Federal defence bureaucrats have clashed with mental health experts over input into policies to support veterans diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, a Senate inquiry has heard.

Annabel McGuire, former deputy research director of the Centre for Military and Veterans’ Health at the University of Queensland, told the inquiry that government departments “failed to work productively” with researchers on several mental health studies.

McGuire said the UQ research centre, which is now closed, had completed five major health studies on the impacts of active service on Australian soldiers serving in the Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, Timor-Leste and the Middle East.