This week is Women’s Health Week, a time dedicated to making women’s health and wellbeing a priority.
This year’s theme, do it anyway, is about taking small steps towards improving your health with the call to “fuel, move, rest, breathe and connect”. While all are useful reminders, it’s the connection part that resonates most with our understanding of health for women veterans.
Scheduled for day five of Women’s Health Week, “connection” is explained as “the voice message to a friend you haven’t spoken to in a while, the community group you’ve been meaning to try or the coffee with a neighbour”. For veteran women, connection can have different connotations.
Responses to our Women Veteran’s Health Survey held earlier this year highlighted connection as a major hurdle when transitioning from the Australian Defence Force to civilian life due to a loss of culture, purpose, structure and social networks inherent with life in the ADF.
The complexity of the veteran healthcare landscape and women-specific issues can also act as multiplying factors, where 57 per cent of respondents mentioned a greater need for veteran-aware health providers and 43 per cent highlighted a lack of information and transition support as problems they encountered. A significant 38 per cent mentioned a lack of understanding of women-specific health issues encountered by veterans.
Here are some illuminating words from one of our respondents:
“Getting out of defence was incredibly isolating. It absolutely contributed to my mental health and it’s taken me years since leaving to navigate the civilian world as a veteran.
“Due to my medical discharge, making connections in an unfamiliar state has been tough and the difficulty I had sorting through piles of information that weren’t in one place, calling people, emailing people, appointment after appointment, out of pocket expenses, extra running around for further information and clarification… It put unnecessary pressure on me.
“My mental health collapsed. Having a sense of purpose is crucial, in my belief, to successfully transition out of defence.
“It should be mandatory to have “check ins” with a type of counsellor for a few weeks after discharge. To see how the member is, how they feel, what their plans are, and if they need support.
“We have not only lost our structure, it feels like we’ve lost our family.”
Another respondent illustrated the shortcomings of connection briefly but clearly:
“I joined up as a 17-year-old. When I left, I didn’t even know how to get a Medicare card!”.
Women’s veteran health and wellbeing can often refer to specific issues, such as various forms of physical pain and mental health conditions, such as PTSD.
However, it requires a complete understanding of the veteran journey, from finding knowledgeable healthcare support to successfully transitioning to civilian workforce cultures.
At Aeternal Group, our Thriving at Work program is geared toward helping with these connections in the workplace, while Provocatus’ Veteran Access Scheme also aims to empower veterans and their families with the knowledge they need to make informed decisions about their healthcare.
We’re happy to share this knowledge and support with women veterans, so please get in touch if you’d like to know more.