September is Suicide Prevention month. Although suicide prevention is an everyday effort, every September there are highlighted events around the world that draw attention to the hard work organizations and individuals are doing and can do to help combat this global epidemic.
Huddled together, knee to knee with the other hapless passengers on last week’s trip to visit one of the 11 DoD Clinical Psychology Training sites, I stopped working on my notes when the cabin crew began to show The Lucky One. The film starring Zac Efron (Logan), Taylor Schilling (Beth) and Blythe Danner tells the story of a Marine Sergeant who searches for his guardian angel – an unknown woman in a photograph that he found on the battlefield and subsequently carried as a safety talisman during his tours of duty in Iraq.
Key Army Medical Department (AMEDD) Telebehavioral Health goals were developed to address the question of how telehealth technology can improve behavioral heath access. The first and foremost goal is to conserve fighting strength. Telebehavioral Health allows the Army the ability to shift providers across the enterprise to meet unforeseen service requirements or surge demands by allowing Telebehavioral Health providers the ability to see Service Members remotely. This has been evident in the last few years with increases in demands for IDES/Psych Narrative Summary (NARSUM), a component of the medical evaluation board process, as well as backlogs in the Reverse Soldier Readiness Processing (RSRP) of different Regional Medical Commands (RMCs).
It is simple math. Over the past 12 years more than 2 million service members have deployed, many multiple times, and some studies suggest that at least 30% of these warriors will have some psychological health concern or traumatic brain injury. That means potentially 600,000 service personnel who could benefit from some type of behavioral health service. Add to that almost 2 family members for every service member, who have also endured multiple deployments and the math becomes clear. The needs of warriors and their families far outstrip the ability of the military and veteran behavioral health services to provide timely access to quality care.
Smart phones, they’re everywhere. In fact, currently there are approximately 91.4 million smartphones in the United States alone. Whether or not you have one and no matter your views on how good, bad or ugly smartphones are for society, statistically speaking the probability that your clients wear one like an extra appendage is very high. In fact, approximately 3 out of 5 clients aged 25 – 34 own a smartphone, which is more than any other age group.