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ELISE WORTHINGTON, REPORTER: For his whole life, Michael Barnes loved the ocean. All he ever wanted was to be a navy clearance diver.
I wept. Having been told that I'd never dive again was probably the worst thing that, the worst words that had ever been spoken to me in my 29 years of service.MICHAEL BARNES: My long-term memory seems to be okay but what I did five minutes ago, I couldn't tell you. Headaches, yes, dizzy spells, yes.
They are regularly exposed to blasts, both in training environments and then, of course, when they are deployed. Over nine, just over nine-month period we were doing probably, probably upwards of a couple 100 explosions.MICHAEL BARNES: I had no control over, at times, what would exit my mouth or the way I would react to a certain situation.SUE BARNES: He's always been there for us, but, yeah, seeing him come, go downhill was really hard. He started getting, you know, like he get angry over the always, the littlest things, you know.
DAVID ROSEN: You find out that they've been exposed to multiple blast injuries, so-called minor blast injuries, but that trivialises it. These are not minor injuries. They may be minor blasts, but they're not minor injuries. DENISE GOLDSWORTHY: They are clearly having behavioural issues. There is clearly a medical cause for this which nobody understands.
ELISE WORTHINGTON: One of the challenges detecting brain injury from blast exposure is that it often can’t be seen on scans. BEN DUNKLEY: The group with more blast, reported poorer neurological functioning, including cognitive impairment, physical and somatic symptoms, and they also showed this, these function abnormalities in the frontotemporal parts of their brain.BEN DUNKLEY: I don't think at this stage we can categorically say that it's causal, but we can certainly say that, you know, in those that have more blast, they show greater brain functional abnormalities and a more severe set of symptoms.
ADAM BAKER: Within an hour, I was putting weapons away and packing gear, and I was out of there unknown as to, you know, what was wrong with me.ELISE WORTHINGTON: Over the next few years, he experienced hearing loss, tinnitus, short term memory loss and his mental health deteriorated. DENISE GOLDSWORTHY: Between December 23 and 1st of February ‘24 the Clearance Diver Trust was aware of 10 Clearance divers being in hospital, seven of them for mental health reasons, four of them had attempted suicide in essentially a six- or seven-week period.MICHAEL BARNES: A number of divers have, have committed suicide for reasons that probably can't be explained.
ELISE WORTHINGTON: In 2021 DVA accepted Adam Baker’s claim for mild traumatic brain injury stating it was likely caused by repeated exposure to blast.
Navy Clearance Divers Suicide Brain Injury
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