MIRECC / CoE

The Veteran’s Voice: Veterans Impact on Research

Veterans’ knowledge and feedback impact every phase of research. “The Veteran’s Voice” takes you inside the projects of SC MIRECC affiliates to get Veterans’ takes on the research they participate in and the impact they have on the results.

Project: Rural Veterans and Community Mental Health Care

Principal Investigators: Drs Kathleen Grubbs, Jessica Walsh, and Patricia Chen

About: This work was funded by the Department of Veterans Affairs, Veterans Health Administration, Office of Rural Health, NOMAD #PROJFY 010902. We interviewed 30 rural Veterans enrolled at the Michael E DeBakey VA Medical Center and Central Arkansas Veterans Healthcare System who had seen a community clinician for mental health services at some point in time during FY2023 through FY2024. The aim of the interviews was to understand why Veterans may have decided to use community care for mental health services and their experience with receiving community care services.

Feedback from Veterans: Most Veterans were very happy with the services received through community care. One said that she felt that Veterans using community care “Are going to actually get the help and resources that they need and they have a higher success rate… The community is more likely to give them tools than to just throw pills at them… They teach you breathing techniques. They talk about what’s going on and now to work through a flashback, how to deal with situations that cause you anxiety. They have more experience with working through the problems than just ‘Here’s a pill.’ ” (Rural, Female, Declined Race Information)

Some, however, reported that they were not satisfied with their care through the community. One shared how he felt that their community providers "Never set plans and goals for the future. It was always just an, “Oh well, it seems like we need to look into this for this behavior. You might wanna learn how to do this. Try talking in this way. Try saying ‘I feel’ instead of ‘You’ to people around you.” Things like that. It was never a set goal kind of thing.” (Rural, Male, White)

Despite the hope that community care would ease access burdens for Veterans, a few Veterans still shared that they felt it was hard to find a mental health clinicians whom they felt was a good for them in rural areas, and described continued clinician shortages for mental health clinicians: “Like out in (Urban City) it was easy to find a therapist that'll fit, that was perfect for me. Because there's 8000 of them in the system already just waiting for us to show up. And I'm out here in (Rural State). I'm very limited on what's available out here. It's very, very limited.” (Rural, Male, White)

Finally, some Veterans described how they were no longer seeing their community provider because of VA policies that limit the amount of time Veterans are to use community care for mental health. Some Veterans wanted to continue with mental health services but were unable to. One shared how, “Once those [community care] sessions ended… I gave it some time to see… I was going to ask for extended care and therapy … I called in to see if I could schedule an appointment. I sent a note through the VA health care messaging system saying I needed an appointment. I didn’t hear back from, I didn’t hear back from any source. … I’ve been so preoccupied with health appointments that I just felt slightly discouraged with making a new request for an appointment, because I just simply felt ignored.” (Rural, Male, Black/African American)

Impact: This feedback highlights the need to conduct vetting processes with community clinicians, and to potentially expand education efforts among community clinicians for the delivery of evidence-based practices. We also recommend VA medical centers proactively seek feedback from Veterans who are seeing a community clinician for mental healthcare. Additionally, improving VA communication systems to support Veterans’ return to and use of other VA mental health services as appropriate may mitigate issues related to continuity of care.

Last updated: January 27, 2026