WithYou’s groundbreaking Rebuild Project is providing much-needed dedicated support for female veterans struggling with trauma and substance use. DDN reports.
‘Women have served within the armed forces for over 100 years,’ says the 2021 We also served: the health and wellbeing of female veterans in the UK report. But while their contribution has been ‘extraordinary’, it states, the prevailing military culture had left its ‘mark on the health and wellbeing of many’.
Women veterans remain ‘very much a hidden population’, states the No man’s land report from veterans’ charity Forward Assist. The authors spoke to 100 women veterans, with the findings giving ‘real cause for concern’. Fifty-eight per cent reported having mental health issues, with ‘little support’ provided to help prepare them for the transition to civilian life, and adding that the civilian community often had difficulty even recognising women as veterans – something that could lead to women becoming ‘depressed, isolated, disconnected from services, and angry that their personal service goes unrecognised’.
Unique needs
Late last year, however, WithYou launched a new pilot substance use support service tailored to the unique needs of this group, and recognising the ‘intersections of military culture, gender-based experiences, and the stigma that surrounds both trauma and substance use within veteran communities’. With funding from the Armed Forces Covenant Trust, WithYou’s Rebuild Project offers specialist trauma-focused psychological therapy and forms part of its wider Armed Forces Community Programme – the charity was already the first drug and alcohol service provider to receive a gold award in the Ministry of Defence’s employer recognition scheme (DDN, November 2025, page 14).
The free services on offer during the Rebuild Project’s 16-week course of specialist one-to-one therapy include CBT and EMDR (eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing), and the project is the ‘first of its kind in terms of having that in-house recovery worker engagement, plus the evidence-based support’ says the service’s high intensity CBT and EMDR therapist, Simran Jassal.
Positive outcomes
A 2021 study published in the journal Addiction found that almost half of women veterans in the UK were drinking at hazardous levels, and the available literature tends to suggest that among female veterans with substance issues, the problems are predominantly with alcohol rather than drugs. Among the Rebuild Project’s clients, it’s ‘usually co-morbid, but is often more alcohol,’ says Jassal – ‘although ketamine is a frequent one, along with cannabis.’ Clients find the EMDR process particularly helpful, she says, with ‘very positive outcomes – including reductions in alcohol use and overall mental health’.
So do her clients feel there’s traditionally been little support available for them? ‘Definitely,’ she says. ‘A lot of the support organisations that are out there are very male-centric – in the advertising the pictures are always of men and the services are run by men, so it doesn’t seem very welcoming for a lot of females.’
Gaining trust
Given the sense of isolation and disconnection that some women veterans can feel, does it often take a long time to gain their trust? ‘It really depends on the client and their needs, and also the experiences they’ve gone through,’ Jassal says. ‘It depends on the trauma. I think they find it easier to open up because I’m female myself – they would have found it a lot harder if I was male – but with some clients, especially with the alcohol use being so substantial, there’s often more self-care work that needs to be done. So that can kind of put the therapy aside to some degree.’
Women now comprise just over 10 per cent of UK armed forces personnel – although the MoD is aiming for 30 per cent by 2030 – and their role has changed substantially over the last century. Whereas during the First World War they were likely to be confined to nursing or domestic roles, they’re now able to serve in close combat – with all the attendant dangers of injury and PTSD.
Worryingly, however, the risks of trauma aren’t just limited to the battlefield. Military sexual trauma (MST) is defined as harassment, bullying or assault that occurs during military service, and according to a survey by Combat Stress one in five women veterans reported being the victim of sexual harassment and one in 20 of a sexual assault during their time in the military – this is alongside a fifth who’d experienced emotional bullying. The No man’s land report, meanwhile, estimated that more than three quarters had either witnessed – or sustained – a physical or sexual assault, with less than a quarter of those who experienced inappropriate or criminal behaviour feeling able to report it.
Trauma familiarity
Added to this, some female veterans will have experienced sexual abuse even before entering the military, and perhaps joined at a young age as an escape from their home environment. The ‘likelihood of experiencing childhood abuse, especially physical and sexual abuse, is higher for individuals with military service compared with the general population’, another Combat Stress report points out.
How many of the Project Rebuild clients have experienced sexual abuse? ‘The majority,’ Jassal states. ‘But in a lot of cases it’s childhood sexual abuse. A lot of the women actually don’t experience trauma in the military, but it’s often what’s led them to the military. As there’s a lot of childhood sexual abuse, there’s that trauma familiarity that they’ve gone on to navigate their life with to some degree.’ The women will then ‘re-experience mistreatment from men around verbal abuse and harassment’, she says. ‘I’ve found more that women have been sexualised through verbal abuse from males, rather than rape, within the military. The sexual assaults have usually happened prior to joining the military.’
This existing trauma can be compounded by ‘going into the military and not having that strong sense of self’, she says, ‘and then coming out in a vulnerable state’. Even with one client who had served in combat situations, ‘her trauma isn’t about the combat,’ she states.
In terms of female veterans being voiceless and disenfranchised, however, things may be slowly starting to change. The project has built strong links to other organisations, and there’s a great deal of effective partnership working, Jassal says. ‘There’s other charities such as Salute Her and Tom Harrison House, and there’s also the Female Veterans’ Transformation Programme, which has been developed by women with lived experience. We work quite closely with them, and they’ve put together a package that includes housing support, mental health support, physical health support, all for women. That’s a great toolkit.’
‘Female veterans are not a homogenous group – they are a diverse group of women of different ages, experiences, ethnicities and backgrounds, who often go unrecognised,’ the toolkit says. While most female veterans won’t necessarily need additional support in transitioning to civilian life, ‘for those that do, all organisations need to do more to make sure they get the right support at the right time and in the right way.’
So is Rebuild likely to become a permanent service? ‘We’ve proposed 12 months, but we’re looking at potentially expanding and extending that, depending on the results,’ she says. ‘But it’s looking really good so far, so I don’t think that will be an issue.’ DDN