“The best time of my life was being in the Army and fighting for my country,” Private Dave Forshaw wrote in his heart-rending suicide note. It was life outside the Army, back in the country for which he had been fighting as a reservist, that he could not face. As Martin Fletcher reports today, Private Forshaw may or may not have been suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), but he was surely a casualty of the Iraq war in which he fought for two six-month tours. And there will be more like him.

Even in peacetime, the Territorial Army provides essential technicial, logistical and medical support for regular soldiers. With British troops engaged in two major military operations, it carries a heavy burden. Yet while reservists and regulars run similar risks and endure comparable hardships in warzones, there is mounting evidence that those who serve in the TA pay a higher price in terms of mental health. Their transitions between civilian and military life are harsher, and they stand less chance of finding timely and appropriate treatment. Help is available, but too few reservists know about it and the systems in place to encourage them to use it are inadequate. They deserve better.

Suicides such as that of Private Forshaw are, so far, mercifully rare. But the odds of more returning reservists taking their own lives or inflicting serious harm on themselves or others are high. Studies suggest that 700 of the 12,000 TA members who have served in Iraq may be suffering from PTSD, and that, far from being shielded from the worst horrors of battle, they are more exposed to them than regular troops because so many serve as medics. Specialists, in particular, tend to deploy to Iraq and Afghanistan individually rather than as units. And reservists are expected, in principle, to return at once to civilian life on completion of tours of duty. The luckier ones will find in family members and colleagues a level of support and understanding comparable with that offered by regular soldiers to each other. But many experience only mutual incomprehension, leading to deep isolation, depression and worse.

The Ministry of Defence has taken some initial steps to tackle the problem. The Reservists’ Mental Health Programme, less than a year old, offers psychiatric assessment and, if necessary, treatment, to all reservists who have completed overseas operational deployments since January 2003. But the treatment is offered only to those who seek it. The programme does little to overcome soldiers’ reluctance to discuss mental health issues for fear of being mocked by peers or – as in Private Forshaw’s case – denied the chance to return to combat. His was a macho world, another reservist said, which helps to explain why veterans wait, on average, 13 years after leaving the Armed Forces before seeking psychiatric help. But the moving honesty with which serving soldiers discuss PTSD on websites, protected by anonymity, belies such machismo and highlights the need for a more proactive approach from the MoD.

“The help was there but I did not take it,” Private Forshaw wrote. There could be no more powerful argument for routine psychiatric assessments for returning reservists. As a new memorial is unveiled to Britain’s post-Second World War combat casulties, the country’s duty of care towards combat survivors must not be forgotten.