'When the school bell goes, it's fight or flight' - the PTSD faced by NI's prison guards

'When the school bell goes, it's fight or flight' - the PTSD faced by NI's prison guards3 hours agoShareSaveAdd as preferred on GoogleAmy StewartandJudith Cummings,BBC News NIGetty/BBCFor Rebecca, something as innocuous as the school run can be fraught with anxiety. The sound of the school bell, she says, "automatically sends me into fight or flight". The bell at her young children's school is the same as the alarm in the prison where she was physically and verbally attacked as part of an 11-year career as a guard. She has since been diagnosed with complex PTSD."I'll flinch, I'll go to run. In my job when that alarm is hit. I'm not running away from the danger, I'm running to the danger. It's completely exhausting."Rebecca, which is not her real name, is one of two former prison guards who spoke to BBC Radio Ulster's Talkback programme about the long-term issues caused by the job, and how they feel there's been a lack of support from prison management.She and fellow former prison guard Simon - also not his real name - described dealing with drugs, paramilitary prisoners and some of Northern Ireland's most dangerous criminals. Simon, who medically retired in 2013, started his career in the now closed Maze prison in 1988.At that time Northern Ireland prisons, and in particularly the Maze with its H-block wing, were synonymous for housing paramilitary prisoners from the height of the Troubles, the conflict in Northern Ireland which raged across the 1970s, 80s and 90s. Before starting the job, Simon said he did "not know what I was going into" but found a career of "drug-filled prisons, jail and bays run by terrorists and prisoners".'Constantly a fight'That threat of violence is something Simon carried with him outside the prison, as he said he was followed by dissident republicans in Belfast city centre. "It was constantly a fight. You were being atta...