A DOCTOR is determined to help soldiers who have witnessed the horrors of war defeat their demons with a key meeting in the heart of Worcester.

Dr David Muss, director at the Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Unit BMI Edgbaston Hospital in Birmingham, has set up a meeting at Worcester Guildhall in the city's High Street to tackle combat stress as he offers to help veterans wake up from the living nightmares which torment them free of charge.

The meeting to discuss the Rewind Technique is to take place on Saturday, April 18 between 10am and noon. The families of soldiers are also welcome at the meeting as he hopes to reach out to all those in the city and beyond troubled by the hidden scars of war.

Dr Muss has already earned the loyal backing of an ex-soldier, former Irish Guard John McClay of Pershore who served eight tours of duty and hopes to attend the meeting.

He was left feeling frustrated when charity Combat Stress stopped referring veterans to Dr Muss as he felt, like him, other soldiers could benefit.

He suffered terrible nightmares and flashbacks after he returned from Bosnia and Kosovo where he witnessed mass genocide.

But, as previously reported, he was helped to cope with his post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), diagnosed in November 2011, using the Rewind Technique which aims to give the sufferer control of his or her traumatic memories, freeing them from involuntary recall.

Dr Muss is to offer the treatment free of charge to veterans because he wants the technique to receive more recognition of its effectiveness from official bodies like the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) so more former soldiers can experience the benefits.

He said, unlike other techniques, he did not require soldiers to give up alcohol as this was often used as a coping mechanism to reduce their nightmares before they could benefit from the technique.

He said: "This treatment (the Rewind Technique) will stop their nightmares. These soldiers want to stop hearing it, seeing it, smelling it. I want to reach out to these people. It is offering them some hope that there is hope. Everyone who has used this technique is so overwhelmed they can't believe it."

Dr Muss would ultimately like the technique to be included in a randomised NICE clinical trial to prove its validity.

Mr McClay, aged 45, said the Rewind Technique helped him after the army and the NHS failed him.

He even recommended Dr Muss's technique to other soldiers, such was his faith in its success. He maintains that conventional treatments, including anti-depressants, do not work on PTSD.

Mr McClay witnessed countless horrors in the Balkans after he began the advance into Kosovo with his battle group in June 1999. The appalling sights included a murdered girl in a village on the edge of Kosovo's capital city Pristina, photograph albums kept in Pristina's police station which showed the severed heads of children and women being raped.

He saw homes burned and looted and full of the bodies of ethnic Albanians and came across the bodies of Serbs murdered by Albanian guerillas.

Mr McClay said of the Rewind Technique: "Yes, it helped me. It has been two years and I have had no problems. PTSD is in your short term memory which is in the front of your head - that is why you're still living the incident. The Rewind Technique puts it back in your long term memory so you're not reliving it."

Combat Stress’ Acting Chief Executive Peter Poole said when we spoke to the charity in January: “Combat Stress, the Veterans’ mental health charity, provides specialist clinical treatment to more than 5,600 ex-service men and women across the UK suffering from psychological injuries.

“Whilst we provide treatment that is approved by NICE, commissioned by the NHS and regulated by the Care Quality Commission, we do look at external programmes – and particularly those specialising in the treatment of veterans with mental health conditions - and would welcome the opportunity to see evidence-based long term proven benefits from therapies such as this.”

Dr Muss said he would like veterans or members of their family to contact him before attending to give him an idea of numbers.

Dr Muss can be contacted on 01789 7738171 or via email on mussdavid@gmail.com