Dr Walter Busuttil has a long and distinguished career in diagnosing and treating PTSD across the breath of military and civilian populations. As a Consultant Psychiatrist, his current role is Director of Research and Training at Combat Stress. Previously he held the position of Medical Director of Combat Stress for 13 years, following his original psychiatry training and career with the RAF. He was formerly part of the management team for the Traumatic Stress Service at the Priory Ticehurst Hospital. He has been a member of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies since 1992. He was a member of the UK Trauma Group from 1998 and was then Chair of the UK Trauma Group for five years until 2013. He was also a Founder Board Member of the UK Psychological Trauma Society between 2010 and 2013.
Dr Busuttil graduated in Medicine from the University of Manchester in 1983. He served in the Medical Branch of the Royal Air Force for 16 years. He was appointed a consultant psychiatrist in 1994. Prior to this in 1988 he qualified as a Principal in General Practice. In the RAF he was part of the team that helped rehabilitate the Beirut Hostages and combatants from the first Gulf War. Between 1997 and 2004 he set up and led a tertiary referral service for sufferers of complex presentations of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder including adult survivors of sexual abuse at the Priory Ticehurst House Hospital in East Sussex. He was then appointed Medical Director to the all-women’s medium secure hospital, ‘The Dene’ in Burgess Hill, West Sussex; where he established a combined dialectic behaviour therapy and psychological trauma service for women suffering from Complex PTSD and Borderline Personality Disorder.
Dr Busuttil joined Combat Stress in June 2007 where he set up cutting edge evidence-based clinical services which replaced respite care services. Clinical services comprised multidisciplinary residential and community evidence-based intervention therapy programmes. In 2011 his service design bid was awarded £20 million from NHS England National Specialist Commissioning to set up residential rehabilitation programmes for veterans suffering from severe chronic PTSD. These programmes were also funded in Scotland commissioned by NHS Scottish. He is a member of the NHSE Armed Forces Clinical Reference Psychiatry Task and Finish Group. He regularly liaises at the highest levels with politicians, the NHS, MoD and other agencies. He regularly comments about psychological trauma issues in the national and international media.
Dr Busuttil set up the Combat Stress Veterans’ Research Department in 2014 embedding it within the Kings Centre for Military Health Research. In the past 5 years, this department has produced over 50 peer-reviewed papers and several book chapters and one book on veterans’ mental health. He has supervised and facilitated the development of collaborations with UK and internationally-based universities and organisations in Australia, Canada and the USA. He gave evidence to the Defence Select Committee related to mental health needs and treatment service provision for veterans in the UK in 2018. Since 2018 he has been part of the 5 Eyes Mental Health Research and Innovation Collaborative (5 Eyes MRIC) representing UK Veterans’ Mental Health which advises the 5 Veterans’ Ministers of the United Kingdom, the USA, Canada, New Zealand and Australia. He has been appointed as a Visiting Professor to the Institute of Psychiatry and Psychology and Neurosciences, which is part of King’s College University of London – as part of the Kings Centre for Military Health Research Department. He has published over 70 peer-reviewed papers and book chapters on PTSD and related disorders; as an invited speaker he has delivered over 240 presentations including keynote lectures, workshops and original research papers in the UK and abroad. He has offered training in military and veteran psychiatry, management of adult survivors and complex PTSD and Dissociative Disorders; disaster management and psychological first aid to first responders; and the biological theories of PTSD and interventions using medications.
Dr Busuttil is also active in private practice managing clinical cases as well as undertaking medico-legal work. He routinely assesses and treats patients suffering the effects of psychological trauma generated by road traffic accidents, interpersonal violence, accidents at work, clinical negligence, disaster and conflict.
For this course, he teaches on diagnostics for trauma presentations, the role for medication, management of co-morbidities, and the role of trauma as the underpinning for many common psychiatric disorders. He brings a wealth of experience in clinical settings and in running traumatic stress treatment services.