Building Community Capacity to Care for Military and Veteran Families: The Star Behavioral Health Providers Program

Abstract

Service members, veterans, and their families frequently have difficulties finding trained behavioral health providers who have knowledge of military culture and issues specific to the military population. This paper documents the design, implementation, effectiveness, and proximal outcomes of the Star Behavioral Health Providers training program (SBHP). We created SBHP as a dissemination effort in response to elevated levels of mental health problems among community-dwelling military and veteran families (CDMVF), limitations in provider capacity in the Departments of Defense (DoD) and Veterans Affairs (VA), and uneven preparation of civilian providers to serve military and veteran families. The goals of the initiative were to:

1. Improve the preparation of community-based professionals to work with CDMVF.

2. Increase providers’ use of evidence-informed information and practices.

3. Strengthen the behavioral health infrastructure for treating CDMVF.

The program provides military-specific training to community-based behavioral health providers and provides a mechanism for those seeking such services to find trained providers. Evaluation data, though limited by the lack of comparison or control groups, provided correlational evidence consistent with each program goal.

Keywords:

• Clinical practice
• marriage relations/divorce/remarriage
• evidence-based practice
• families and children
• spouses

Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to Admiral Joan Hunter, the Indiana Department of Mental Health, the National Guard Bureau, and the Indiana National Guard for their for their wisdom and support. We are grateful to all of our colleagues at the Military Family Research Institute, especially Janet Wagner and Pat Sellers for their contributions, as well as SBHP providers. Finally, we acknowledge significant contributions by Ann Shallenberger to the creation of this program.

Additional information

Funding

Preparation of this manuscript was supported by grants to the first author from Lilly Endowment and a subcontract funded by Department of Defense Suicide Prevention Office [DFAR 252.204-7000].