The mental injury of soldiers engaged in operations is a phenomenon that affects more than 3,000 French soldiers. On March 30, the Solidarité Défense association presented the Minister for the Armed Forces, Sébastien Lecornu, with a project to make support systems more effective and involve families who are collateral victims of post-traumatic stress syndrome. Testimony. (Rebroadcast April 02, 2023)
He had 1,000 lives in the Navy commandos. Fernand, known as “Pépito”, spent twenty years in the special forces, multiplying external operations until this last mission in Mali. In January 2015, in Kidal, a suicide vehicle exploded very close to him: “ I am “blasted” with a very violent projection. I fall into unconsciousness and in a coma. When I open my eyes, I think I’m dead and I see a blue angel, but what surprised me the most is that he had my head and he was smiling at me. I went into battle immediately, as soon as I came to my senses to stay until the end of the mission. »
“Blasted” without apparent injury, but back in France, Fernand is no longer the same. ” I was isolated, I no longer understood anything, he continues. My children saw that when they spoke to me I did not listen. I was no longer there. You are in the west, you are irritable, you have a loss of concentration. You don’t know anymore, you can’t and you can’t anymore, you don’t know. You have this feeling of permanent fall, you sink, you fall… When you belong to elite units, you have a ego oversized so I dared not cross the door of the medical for fear of being unfit. But I saw so many colleagues sink that I said to myself: “we must not wait.” I knew I had something. »
Post-traumatic stress
The doctors at the Brest military hospital make their diagnosis: post-traumatic stress. A psychological injury which results in particular in a desocialization of the injured. ” Several times, I proposed to my wife that we separate so that she would be happy. I told him : “Rebuild your life because I will never be the same again.” You have to talk without judging and go to the injured, go especially to his family because they don’t understand why the dad or the mom are different, they don’t know. Dad, he drinks, he’s irritable, he gets angry easily. Dad is no longer there. You come into clashes which are terrible, you are in conflict with your children. In your head, everything is jostling, you no longer understand yourself. »
It is urgent, pleads Fernand, to change the look on the psychic wound: “ Post-traumatic syndrome doesn’t mean crazy. We don’t have a funnel over our heads, we’re not crazy! However, the scar is still present. It can reopen, you have no control. A word, an attitude can quickly trigger everything and what triggers post-traumatic syndromes a lot is the administrative process. We don’t understand why there is all this to do, we have proven everything, we constantly have to start all over again. You feel betrayed somewhere and you sink again. »
The Solidarité Défense association proposes the establishment of a course for caregivers, to support the injured and those around them and have post-traumatic stress syndromes recognized at the same level as the physical injury.
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