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Karras E, Arriola N, McCarten JM, Britton PC, Besterman-Dahan K, Stecker TA. Veteran Perspectives of Barriers and Facilitators to Campaigns Promoting Help Seeking During Crisis. Community mental health journal. 2021 Aug 1; 57(6):1045-1051.
Dimensions for VA is a web-based tool available to VA staff that enables detailed searches of published research and research projects. The objective of this paper is to characterize barriers and facilitators reported by U.S. military veterans related to campaigns promoting help seeking during suicidal crisis. Individual telephone interviews (N = 40) were conducted from August 2018-April 2019 with a sample of veterans who had a recent non-fatal suicide attempt. Interview transcripts were analyzed using a constant comparison analytic strategy. Participants reported the four facilitators to message effectiveness: (a) potential reach of specific channels; (b) interruption of suicidal thoughts; (c) normalizing the suicidal experience and help seeking; and (d) modeling desired behavior change. Barriers that hindered campaigns were also identified and include (a) broad messages, (b) challenges in cognitive processing, (c) media avoidance and (d) a boomerang effect. This study underscores the significance of involving those with lived experience to identify factors that may improve or hinder message effectiveness.