Researchers screen vets' health online

Aim to give more mental health care

Brenda Booth of the UAMS Psychiatric Research Institute is part of a team researching military service members who returned from deployment.
Brenda Booth of the UAMS Psychiatric Research Institute is part of a team researching military service members who returned from deployment.

An investigator with the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences and a research coordinator from the Central Arkansas Veterans Healthcare System are working to make it easier for veterans and service members nationwide to seek mental health care.

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Brenda Booth of the UAMS Psychiatric Research Institute is part of a team researching military service members who returned from deployment.

Brenda Booth, with the UAMS Psychiatric Research Institute, and a group of researchers in Iowa recently completed a study that screened service members online for post-deployment mental health problems and then offered them resources to learn about their conditions and receive care.

The researchers are now seeking funding to roll out the online screening program to a wider audience through the federal Veterans Health Administration as a way to streamline the process of getting mental health care and "facilitate breaking down barriers," Booth said.

"To get people into care -- that's the main reason to do it," she said. "I think this is a very important thing to be doing to get veterans into mental health care when they need it. We know that veterans who come back from Iraq and Afghanistan have some major issues."

The research was supported by the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs' Mental Health Quality Enhancement Research Initiative, a national research program based at the Central Arkansas Veterans Healthcare System in North Little Rock.

Jeff Smith, a consultant with the research program, worked with Booth and the other researchers to get the project funded.

The initiative has supported approximately 100 research studies in the past few years, Smith said. At any one time, he consults with researchers across the country on 20 to 40 different projects.

"With this project, it fits one of our goals at QUERI [Quality Enhancement Research Initiative] to support recovery for veterans with mental illness," Smith said. "One of the first steps toward recovery is to identify that you have these conditions, to be screened and learn about the condition itself, and be given the resources to engage with care."

Booth's first studies on the topic started several years ago under the direction of Anne Sadler, a researcher with the Iowa City VA Health Care System and the University of Iowa department of psychiatry.

Findings of the most recent study will be presented at the annual meeting of the American Public Health Association in the fall.

In the latest study, researchers sent emails to reserve and National Guard members of the U.S. Air Force and Army. The service members were located in Iowa, Illinois, Nebraska, Missouri and Kansas, and they had to have been deployed in the previous three years.

Of those who chose to participate, 200 were men and 214 were women, Booth said. They were asked questions to test for combat trauma exposure, military sexual trauma, prescription drug misuse, alcohol problems, post-traumatic stress disorder, family readjustment problems, depression, traumatic brain injury and domestic violence.

After the questionnaire, participants were told what conditions, if any, they screened positive for and were sent links to information about the conditions. They were also instructed how to enroll into the VA.

"The program has the ability to print off your results, so if you go to see a mental health provider you can take it with you," Booth said. "It's designed to be as user-friendly as possible and to get people who have mental health issues into mental health services."

According to an abstract of the study, more than half of those tested expressed concern about their post-deployment adjustment, but less than 20 percent sought mental health care.

Booth said most of the people screened -- about 98 percent -- were found to be positive for something. The screening is not the same as a clinician giving a diagnosis, Booth said, but "it is saying there may be some issues here."

"This might help explain how they've been feeling," Smith said.

Years before this study, Booth and Sadler did a similar screening with only female service members.

In interviews to gauge what participants thought of that screening, Booth and Sadler were told by the women that they appreciated that it was done online.

"They like the privacy and the ability to do it whenever they have the time," Booth said.

Taking their idea and going forward, the researchers want to eventually put the screening program on a VA website, My HealtheVet. The website was created to allow veterans and service members to connect to their health care provider online. It offers links to set up appointments and refill prescriptions, among other things.

Smith said Booth and Sadler's Web-based tool could be a "really valuable resource for people who may not be engaged in care and would have not realized they had some sort of problem to work through."

But getting their screening onto the site will take funding -- and time, Booth said.

"It would be a great avenue to communicating with a mental health provider," she said. "We haven't pulled it off yet."

Metro on 07/05/2015

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