TRICARE Mental Health Benefit

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Meeting the Mental Health Needs of the Department
of Defense An Opportunity for Collaboration with
Colleges and Universities

LT Rick Schobitz, Ph.D., United States Public
Health Service Donna C. Bailey, M.S., Iowa State
University
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Objectives

• Identify potential benefits of collaboration
  between Colleges/Universities and Mental Health
  Teams deployed to combat
• Describe learning opportunities available to
  students collaborating with mental health teams
  serving members of the Uniformed Services
• Identify implications for future collaboration

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Introduction

• The mission of the 2nd Brigade, 25th ID Combat
  Stress Control (CSC) team was to provide
  behavioral health support to approximately 3500
  Infantry Soldiers during and after a 13 month
  combat deployment to Iraq
• Seeking a larger scale prevention focused impact,
  the CSC team collaborated with faculty and
  graduate students from Iowa State University to
  develop an enhanced Command Climate Survey

• Measures included
• Command developed items related to quality of
  life, perception of safety, areas of improvement
• Perceptions of Command from small unit to BTN
  level
• Outcome Questionnaire-45 (OQ-45 Lambert, Lunnen,
  Umphress, Hansen, Burlingame, 1994)
• Trauma Screening Questionnaire (TSQ Brewin,
  Rose, Andrews, Green, Tata, McEvedy, Turner,
  Foa, 2002)
• Trait Forgivingness Scale (TFS Berry,
  Worthington, OConnor, Parrott, Wade, 2005)
• Brief Religious Coping Scale (R-COPE Pargament,
  Smith, Koenig, Perez, 1998)

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Our Team

• 1 Clinical Psychologist
• 1 Clinical Social Worker
• 2 Behavioral Health Technicians

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The Process

• Contact with Faculty Member from Iowa State
  occurred 2 months prior to deployment
• Approval from Commanding General
• Development of survey occurred as quickly as
  possible
• Random sample of Companies
• Units surveyed 4 times during deployment
• Results from these surveys were used to develop
  data driven recommendations for improving morale

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The Benefits of Collaboration

• Ability to provide relevant feedback and
  suggestions to Command
• Tangible findings included need for better shower
  facilities, most consistent stressor was for the
  welfare of family members at home
• Commanders related better when provided data to
  substantiate suggestions
• Support of the University with data entry and
  analyses allowed for fast turn around
• The graduate students were able to utilize data
  for dissertation projects

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Meeting the Mental Health Needs of an Infantry
Brigade Returning from War

• Upon return from deployment, the mental health
  needs exceeded available resources
• Collaborated with Argosy University to develop a
  training program providing doctoral students in
  clinical psychology supervised experience working
  with 25th ID Soldiers
• Result Increased access to care, clinical
  training focused on deployment issues,
  recruitment tool for the Uniformed Services
• Challenge Commitment needed for training and
  supervision

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Implications for Future Collaboration

• Collaborative efforts may help meet the mental
  health needs for the DoD
• Interest in training to work with members of the
  Uniformed Services seems high
• Potential barriers to future collaboration
  include the time and effort it takes to develop
  relationships, obtain approval, provide training
  and supervision
• However, the benefits of our collaborative
  efforts made these efforts very worthwhile

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Questions?