We’re going to add Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) to our election manifesto. It’s a common disorder among serving and former Armed Forces personnel, particularly those who serve (or have served) in war zones. By definition, the vast majority of serving and former military personnel are men.

From FoI responses on the MoD website it’s all too obvious the scale of the problem is far beyond anything that will be admitted officially, and from other sources we know the scale of the resources applied to the problem is woefully short of what is required. PTSD is a driver of a great deal of misery, wrecked lives, alcohol and drug abuse, homelessness, suicide… but the victims are mainly men, so the state has little interest in the matter, insofar as allocating taxpayers’ money is concerned.

We recently discovered from a government report that central government doesn’t regard suicide as an issue with which it should be concerned, so responsibility is left at a local level. Just £1.5 million is being spent by central government on six research studies into suicide. Not one of the studies is focusing on male victims, although three-quarters of suicide victims are men. By comparison, the government is spending £30 million p.a. encouraging women to train as engineers. It would appear the UK has a far more pressing ‘need’ for more female engineers than to reduce the male suicide rate.

And men pay 72% of the income tax collected in the UK…