Deployment Psychology Blog

Suicide Prevention Awareness Month may have officially ended but the efforts being taken by the DoD continue to take shape. In March of 2022, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin announced the establishment of the Suicide Prevention and Response Independent Review Committee (SPRIRC). The final report from the committee was released in February of this year and outlined specific recommendations on how the DoD can improve suicide prevention efforts in areas such as treatment access, training and education, public awareness campaigns, behavioral health staffing, research, and DoD policy and regulatory issues as a whole (Iwamasa et al., 2023).

The COVID-19 pandemic brought about significant challenges for healthcare systems worldwide, with behavioral health services being particularly overwhelmed by the increased demand for mental health support. Even before the pandemic, many behavioral health clinics throughout the Military Healthcare System (MHS) and in the civilian sector were contending with increased demand for services beyond the capacity of the system to provide them. Traditional models of therapy rooted in 45- or 50-min individual therapy sessions, while appropriate in many situations and presentations, are not what everyone needs.