Silent Battles campaign puts veteran mental health support in the public eye
A new mental health campaign in Hull and the East Riding is aiming at a problem that often stays hidden until it becomes severe: veterans struggling quietly with the aftereffects of military service. Built with local veterans, Armed Forces organisations and health partners, Silent Battles uses three short films to encourage earlier help-seeking and to make clear that support exists for veterans and their families across the region.
The campaign is more than a general awareness drive. It is designed around the reality that military service can leave people carrying psychological, social and practical burdens long after discharge. Those pressures can include PTSD, anxiety, depression, addictions and suicidal thoughts, along with the strain of returning to civilian life and managing finances, family relationships, housing and employment. For many veterans, those problems do not arrive in isolation. They accumulate, overlap and reinforce each other.
A message built around early help-seeking, not silent endurance
The central message is direct: veterans do not need to “battle on” alone. The campaign’s films, created by JayJay Media and shared through the councils’ social media channels, place veterans and professionals side by side to talk about what it means to serve, to leave service, and to live with the consequences when support is delayed.
One sentence captures the clinical and human stakes: isolation can turn treatable distress into entrenched illness.
That is particularly relevant in veteran mental health, where stigma remains a major barrier to care. Many people who have served are used to self-reliance, discipline and managing under pressure. Those qualities can be assets during deployment, but they can also make it harder to admit when symptoms have crossed a line from manageable stress to a serious mental health condition. When people delay contact with services, they may arrive with more severe symptoms, poorer sleep, strained relationships and a reduced ability to work or maintain stable housing.
The campaign was developed with veterans from across Hull and the East Riding, which gives it a credibility that top-down public messaging often lacks. Messages about stigma and recovery tend to land differently when they come from people who understand the military culture from the inside. That peer-informed approach is especially important for conditions such as PTSD, where shame, avoidance and emotional numbing can keep people away from care for years.
Why the campaign links psychological distress with housing, work and family strain
Veteran mental health is rarely just a psychiatric issue. It sits at the intersection of trauma exposure, identity change and social disruption. Leaving the armed forces can mean losing structure, purpose, community and routine all at once. The campaign reflects that broader clinical reality by including transition difficulties, financial strain, family stress, housing problems and employment concerns alongside symptoms such as depression or addiction.
This wider lens matters because social instability can intensify psychological symptoms. Poor housing can worsen sleep and agitation. Unemployment can deepen hopelessness and increase alcohol or drug misuse. Family tension can reduce the protective value of close relationships at exactly the point when support is most needed. For clinicians, the practical implication is clear: asking only about mood symptoms is not enough. Care needs to include the circumstances shaping a veteran’s day-to-day life.
The campaign also points veterans toward Op COURAGE in North of England, the NHS Veterans Mental Health and Wellbeing Service. The service supports serving personnel with a discharge date within the next six months, non-mobilised reservists, veterans and the families of serving personnel, reservists and veterans. That broad remit reflects the fact that distress can begin before discharge and continue long after it.
Local leadership and specialist advice shape the campaign’s reach
The project is commissioned by East Riding of Yorkshire Council and jointly funded with Hull City Council. It is being advised by Dr Jo Bell from the University of Hull’s School of Psychology and Social Work, bringing academic and clinical perspective into a public-facing campaign. In mental health work, that kind of collaboration can help ensure that messages are not only sympathetic but psychologically informed and accessible.
Councillor Linda Tock, Hull City Council’s Veterans and Armed Forces Champion, framed the effort around remembrance, sacrifice and the obligation to make help visible. Her message is rooted in an important service principle: people who have carried responsibility in high-pressure settings may be least likely to volunteer their own distress. Councillor Liam Dealtry, East Riding of Yorkshire Council Armed Forces Members Champion, placed similar emphasis on reassurance and access to care.
The campaign’s intent is straightforward, but the need behind it is complex. Veterans are not a single, uniform group. Some adapt quickly after service, while others face delayed psychological effects that surface only when work, family life or physical health changes. A public campaign cannot solve those problems on its own, but it can lower the threshold for asking for help and make the available pathways easier to find.
Stigma remains the barrier the campaign is trying to move
For many veterans, the hardest part of seeking support is not recognising that something is wrong. It is moving from private struggle to public disclosure. Mental health stigma can operate through fear of seeming weak, fear of being misunderstood and fear of becoming a burden to family or peers. Those pressures are often intensified in military communities, where toughness and endurance are deeply valued.
Public campaigns can only do so much, but they can change the local social script. When veterans see peers speaking openly about recovery, and when families hear that support extends beyond the individual service member, the decision to seek help may feel less like a failure and more like a practical step. The films in Silent Battles are built around that shift.
The campaign stops short of claiming a measurable clinical outcome, and no data are presented on uptake, symptom reduction or service demand. What it does offer is a clear local response to a documented public health need: visible pathways into specialist veteran support, stronger awareness of the emotional toll of service, and a direct challenge to the culture of silence that can keep people from care until crisis point.