Pre-Operational Stress Briefing: Does it have any Effect? A Comparison of Royal Naval and Royal Marine Personnel Receiving a Pre-Operational Stress Briefing with a Group of Personnel who did not

The literature on effectiveness of stress education is relatively sparse. There is some indication that stress education has some beneficial effect with respect to reducing anxiety and improving coping skills, but so far there is little evidence concerning longer term outcomes. There is no equivalent literature for UK military. Current policy requires all personnel going on operations to have this pre-deployment education, but there is very little evidence to recommend this, other than good face validity. In 2003 approximately 8000 Royal Naval and Royal Marines personnel deployed on Operation TELIC 1. A Mental Health Team (MHT) of four personnel (1 psychiatrist and 3 psychiatric nurses) was deployed with forces afloat. During the transit to the Northern Arabian Gulf, the MHT provided pre-deployment operational stress education to approximately 4000 personnel. Data from the KCMHR study into the health and wellbeing of UK Armed Forces personnel who deployed on Operation TELIC 1 has allowed a linkage study to look at the effect of a pre-operational stress brief. RESULT: [Data yet to be analysed] CONCLUSIONS [To be confirmed]