Written questions, answers and statements

Unmanned Air Vehicles

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Question for Ministry of Defence

UIN 6481, tabled on 9 July 2015

Question

Mr David Anderson
Labour
Blaydon
Commons

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, whether his Department has undertaken or commissioned any assessment of the psychological effect of using unmanned air vehicles.

Answer

Penny Mordaunt
Conservative
Portsmouth North
Commons

Answered on

14 July 2015

The Ministry of Defence (MOD) takes seriously the mental health of all members of the Armed Forces. The RAF Stress Management and Resilience Training Team has delivered stress awareness briefs to units operating unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), to give personnel awareness of the subject and make them aware of the wide range of assistance and treatment that is available.

While the particular stressors of their work are recognised, an assessment of the referral figures for MOD Departments of Community Mental Health from 2009-13 indicated that UAV pilots were no more likely to present with any form of mental health condition than the general Armed Forces population.

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Ministry of Defence
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