Innovative Strategies to Destigmatize Mental Health Care and Empower Veterans

Background:

United States military veterans are a multi-generational, culturally diverse population of more than 22 million people that face unique challenges in accessing mental health care. For many veterans, the greatest barrier in accessing mental health care is not location or cost, but the stigma associated with needing mental health care. Cultural values of strength and self-reliance can make it difficult for them to ask for or accept help. The Department of Veterans Affairs has developed an innovative portfolio of self-management tools to better meet the needs of this hard-to-reach population. VA has helmed a multichannel communications campaign to disseminate these tools using best-practice marketing strategies and carefully using language that emphasizes empowerment, not illness.

Program background:

Veteran Training (www.VeteranTraining.va.gov) is a web platform that transforms clinical psychotherapy protocols into publicly available, online programs. These free, anonymous, online self-help courses address mental health conditions common within the Veteran population including anger management (Anger and Irritability Management Skills (AIMS), depression (Moving Forward), and insomnia (Path to Better Sleep). These online tools provide easily accessible resources that can be used at any time or place. This digital approach allows individuals to avoid the stigma of having a mental health condition on their medical record while still having access to evidence-based resources.

In order to reach individuals who would benefit from these programs but who will not seek treatment, VA has used a multi-channel marketing and outreach strategy including testimonial videos, Veteran Service Organizations, focus groups, educational presentations, blog and social media posts, and extensive stakeholder outreach.

Evaluation Methods and Results:

More than 550,000 users have used the tools on the Veteran training website since summer 2014. In the past five years VA has learned several crucial lessons in performing multi-generational stakeholder outreach, the most important being:

• Change the language: VA’s tools are designed to empower Veterans by placing the focus away from illness and towards steps to treating it. Through language that’s less clinical and more like coaching (i.e. using the word “skill” instead of “therapy”), VA constructs a framework of positivity and achievement for Veterans to manage their mental health.
• Consider the messenger: VA has more success with testimonial-based outreach campaigns where Veterans see themselves in the spokesperson. In addition to diversifying the messenger, VA has consciously stayed away from using hopeless or archaic imagery to depict living with mental illness (such as a person with their head in their hands to represent depression).

Conclusions:

Over the last five years, more than 500,000 Veterans have used VA’s free online courses to access much needed mental health resources. This number is a testament to the effectiveness of VA’s multi-channel communications strategy in creating awareness and adoption of its online trainings, as well as the ability of this virtual platform to decrease the effects of stigma in preventing Veterans from accessing mental health care.

Implications for research and/or practice:

Further investigation of VA’s best practices in marketing and destigmatizing digital mental health care resources creates opportunities for marketing similar resources to the civilian population.