Medical Discharge
Medical discharge is rarely chosen, often sudden, and almost always carries an identity shock alongside the medical one.
Sign in to save this readTwo losses at once
Medical discharge involves two simultaneous losses: a change in health and a change in role. Either alone is significant. Together they can overwhelm the systems that normally hold a person together.
What helps
AURIS supports people through medically-driven transition by separating what is medical from what is identity-related, and giving structure to both.
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Further reading from the Knowledge Hub on the same themes.
- Occupational Transition · 1 min readMilitary
Leaving military service is one of the most studied, and most under-supported, identity transitions in the UK.
- Psychology · 1 min readRegulation
Regulation is the set of skills and habits that keep the nervous system, emotions and attention workable under pressure.
- Psychology · 1 min readPurpose
Purpose is the felt sense that what you do matters. It is rebuilt deliberately, not waited for.
- Research · 6 min readI didn't start researching identity. I started trying to help people.
A first person account of how a medical discharge in 2014, a self funded CIC in 2015 and a woodworking project in Liverpool in 2017 turned into the questions now being asked through Identity After the Uniform.
- Research · 4 min readThe Identity Gap in Service Leaver Support: Why It Matters
Practical resettlement support is comprehensive, yet our review of UK transition guidance found very little explicit discussion of identity as a psychological process. This article explains what we examined, what we found, and where identity adaptation fits alongside existing support.
Identity After the Uniform
Related research
Published records from the research programme behind this article.
- White Papers · 2 min readWhite Paper 0, From Transition to Service Provider Identity Adaptation
A conceptual position paper reframing the Identity After the Uniform research programme: transition is the trigger, but the phenomenon under study is identity adaptation after a trained, high-pressure service role.
- White Papers · 1 min readIdentity After the Uniform
Emerging findings from the first stage of the Identity After the Uniform research programme, a qualitative study of identity reconstruction after military service and other identity-defining roles.
- Foundations · 4 min readThe AURIS Connection Hub
A verified, worldwide directory of support organisations, events and opportunities, built into the AURIS Identity System because the research kept showing the same problem: the right support usually exists, it is just hard to find.
- Research · 6 min readState of the Evidence: What We Know, What We Don't, and Why This Research Is Needed
An audit of the AURIS Master Evidence Repository, conducted 30 August 2026, setting out plainly which evidence is solid, which is located but not yet fully verified, which has been downgraded, and which gaps remain open.
Gemma Gardner
Founder and Research Lead, AURIS Institute
Gemma Gardner leads the AURIS research programme on identity and occupational transition. Her work builds the evidence base behind the AURIS Identity System and the Identity System, drawing on interviews with service leavers, families and the organisations that support them.
- Lead author, Identity Performance Psychology white paper series
- Principal investigator, AURIS identity adaptation interview programme
- Author of AURIS submissions on identity in occupational transition
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Everything published here comes from the AURIS research programme. The AURIS Identity System, the separate membership platform at aurisidentity.com, is where the same framework is taught as guided courses and daily practice.
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