Measuring the Quality of Care for Psychological Health Conditions in the Military Health System

Measuring the Quality of Care for Psychological Health Conditions in the Military Health System
Author: Kimberly A. Hepner
Publisher: Rand Corporation
Total Pages: 239
Release: 2015-04-24
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0833086561

To inform improvements to the quality of care delivered by the military health system for posttraumatic stress disorder and major depressive disorder, researchers developed a framework and identified, developed, and described a candidate set of measures for monitoring, assessing, and improving the quality of care. This document describes their research approach and the measure sets that they identified.

Evaluation of the Department of Veterans Affairs Mental Health Services

Evaluation of the Department of Veterans Affairs Mental Health Services
Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 467
Release: 2018-03-29
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 0309466601

Approximately 4 million U.S. service members took part in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Shortly after troops started returning from their deployments, some active-duty service members and veterans began experiencing mental health problems. Given the stressors associated with war, it is not surprising that some service members developed such mental health conditions as posttraumatic stress disorder, depression, and substance use disorder. Subsequent epidemiologic studies conducted on military and veteran populations that served in the operations in Afghanistan and Iraq provided scientific evidence that those who fought were in fact being diagnosed with mental illnesses and experiencing mental healthâ€"related outcomesâ€"in particular, suicideâ€"at a higher rate than the general population. This report provides a comprehensive assessment of the quality, capacity, and access to mental health care services for veterans who served in the Armed Forces in Operation Enduring Freedom/Operation Iraqi Freedom/Operation New Dawn. It includes an analysis of not only the quality and capacity of mental health care services within the Department of Veterans Affairs, but also barriers faced by patients in utilizing those services.

Returning Home from Iraq and Afghanistan

Returning Home from Iraq and Afghanistan
Author: Institute of Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 193
Release: 2010-03-31
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 0309152852

Nearly 1.9 million U.S. troops have been deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq since October 2001. Many service members and veterans face serious challenges in readjusting to normal life after returning home. This initial book presents findings on the most critical challenges, and lays out the blueprint for the second phase of the study to determine how best to meet the needs of returning troops and their families.

Quality of Care for PTSD and Depression in the Military Health System

Quality of Care for PTSD and Depression in the Military Health System
Author: Kimberly A. Hepner
Publisher: Rand Corporation
Total Pages: 221
Release: 2016-02-18
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0833090496

"The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) strives to maintain a physically and psychologically healthy, mission-ready force, and the care provided by the Military Health System (MHS) is critical to meeting this goal. Given the rates of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression among U.S. service members, attention has been directed to ensuring the quality and availability of programs and services targeting these and other psychological health (PH) conditions. Understanding the current quality of care for PTSD and depression is an important step toward improving care across the MHS. To help determine whether service members with PTSD or depression are receiving evidence-based care and whether there are disparities in care quality by branch of service, geographic region, and service member characteristics (e.g., gender, age, pay grade, race/ethnicity, deployment history), DoD's Defense Centers of Excellence for Psychological Health and Traumatic brain Injury (DCoE) asked the RAND Corporation to conduct a review of the administrative data of service members diagnosed with PTSD or depression and to recommend areas on which the MHS could focus its efforts to continuously improve the quality of care provided to all service members. This report characterizes care for service members seen by MHS for diagnoses of PTSD and/or depression and finds that while the MHS prerforms well in ensuring outpatient follow-up following psychiatric hospitalization, providing sufficient psychotherapy and medication management needs to be improved. Further, quality of care for PTSD and depression varied by service branch, TRICARE region, and service member characteristics, suggesting the need to ensure that all service members receive high-quality care." -- Back cover.

Promoting Mental Health

Promoting Mental Health
Author: World Health Organization
Publisher:
Total Pages: 67
Release: 2004-01-01
Genre: Mental health promotion
ISBN: 9789241591591

Mental health can be improved through the collective action of society. Improving mental health requires broadly based policies and programmes, as well as specific activities in the health field relating to the prevention and treatment of ill health. .

Military Veteran Psychological Health and Social Care

Military Veteran Psychological Health and Social Care
Author: Jamie Hacker Hughes
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 233
Release: 2017-05-12
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 1351763083

When servicewomen and men leave the armed forces, their care transfers to the statutory and third sector where the quality and provision of services can vary enormously. This edited book, encompassing a range of perspectives, from service user to professional, provides a comprehensive overview of services available. Each chapter, in turn, examines the policy underpinnings of systems and services covering the psychological health and social care of military veterans and then focuses on the needs of a discrete number of types of military veterans including early service leavers, veterans in the criminal justice system, older veterans and reservists, together with the needs of the children of veterans’ families. This is the first UK book to examine the whole spectrum of contemporary approaches to the psychological health and social care of military veterans both in the United Kingdom and overseas. The book is edited by Professor Jamie Hacker Hughes, a former head of healthcare psychology within the UK Ministry of Defence and all contributors are experts in policy, service provision and academic research in this area. It will be of special interest to those designing and planning, commissioning, managing and delivering mental health and social care to military veterans and their families

Vital Signs

Vital Signs
Author: Institute of Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 245
Release: 2015-08-26
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 0309324963

Thousands of measures are in use today to assess health and health care in the United States. Although many of these measures provide useful information, their usefulness in either gauging or guiding performance improvement in health and health care is seriously limited by their sheer number, as well as their lack of consistency, compatibility, reliability, focus, and organization. To achieve better health at lower cost, all stakeholders - including health professionals, payers, policy makers, and members of the public - must be alert to what matters most. What are the core measures that will yield the clearest understanding and focus on better health and well-being for Americans? Vital Signs explores the most important issues - healthier people, better quality care, affordable care, and engaged individuals and communities - and specifies a streamlined set of 15 core measures. These measures, if standardized and applied at national, state, local, and institutional levels across the country, will transform the effectiveness, efficiency, and burden of health measurement and help accelerate focus and progress on our highest health priorities. Vital Signs also describes the leadership and activities necessary to refine, apply, maintain, and revise the measures over time, as well as how they can improve the focus and utility of measures outside the core set. If health care is to become more effective and more efficient, sharper attention is required on the elements most important to health and health care. Vital Signs lays the groundwork for the adoption of core measures that, if systematically applied, will yield better health at a lower cost for all Americans.

Assessing Fitness for Military Enlistment

Assessing Fitness for Military Enlistment
Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 264
Release: 2006-02-27
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 0309164877

The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) faces short-term and long-term challenges in selecting and recruiting an enlisted force to meet personnel requirements associated with diverse and changing missions. The DoD has established standards for aptitudes/abilities, medical conditions, and physical fitness to be used in selecting recruits who are most likely to succeed in their jobs and complete the first term of service (generally 36 months). In 1999, the Committee on the Youth Population and Military Recruitment was established by the National Research Council (NRC) in response to a request from the DoD. One focus of the committee's work was to examine trends in the youth population relative to the needs of the military and the standards used to screen applicants to meet these needs. When the committee began its work in 1999, the Army, the Navy, and the Air Force had recently experienced recruiting shortfalls. By the early 2000s, all the Services were meeting their goals; however, in the first half of calendar year 2005, both the Army and the Marine Corps experienced recruiting difficulties and, in some months, shortfalls. When recruiting goals are not being met, scientific guidance is needed to inform policy decisions regarding the advisability of lowering standards and the impact of any change on training time and cost, job performance, attrition, and the health of the force. Assessing Fitness for Military Enlistment examines the current physical, medical, and mental health standards for military enlistment in light of (1) trends in the physical condition of the youth population; (2) medical advances for treating certain conditions, as well as knowledge of the typical course of chronic conditions as young people reach adulthood; (3) the role of basic training in physical conditioning; (4) the physical demands and working conditions of various jobs in today's military services; and (5) the measures that are used by the Services to characterize an individual's physical condition. The focus is on the enlistment of 18- to 24-year-olds and their first term of service.

Public Health Perspectives on Depressive Disorders

Public Health Perspectives on Depressive Disorders
Author: Neal L. Cohen
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
Total Pages: 457
Release: 2017-08-29
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 1421422794

How does mental health impact public health? In 2001, the WHO recognized depressive disorders as the leading cause of disability worldwide. But most Americans who meet diagnostic criteria for major depression are untreated or undertreated. Luckily, recent advances have finally made it possible for the field of public health to address mental health in the population. Public Health Perspectives on Depressive Disorders fills a gap by identifying the tools and strategies of public health practice and by exploring their application to twenty-first-century public mental health policy and practice. By looking at depressive disorders through a public health lens, this book highlights the centrality of mental health to public health. Linking the available research on depressive illness at the population level with public mental health policy and practice, expert contributors set a research agenda that will help make mental health a central part of public health science and practice. This book is an invaluable resource for researchers and practitioners to develop, facilitate, and conduct pilot and feasibility studies of promising preventive and treatment interventions that might mitigate the progression toward major depression and other mental disorders among populations at risk. The first part of the book underscores the public health significance of depressive illness by focusing on the evidence provided by recent approaches to nosology, epidemiology, illness burden, and impact on overall health. The second part looks at the social and environmental influences on depressive disorders that are critical to future efforts to prevent illness and to promote mentally healthy communities. The third and longest part addresses the vulnerability of diverse groups to depressive illness and underscore best practices to mitigate risk while improving both the preventive and therapeutic armamentaria.

Provision of Mental Health Counseling Services Under TRICARE

Provision of Mental Health Counseling Services Under TRICARE
Author: Institute of Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 351
Release: 2010-06-23
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 0309157196

In this book, the IOM makes recommendations for permitting independent practice for mental health counselors treating patients within TRICARE-the DOD's health care benefits program. This would change current policy, which requires all counselors to practice under a physician's supervision without regard to their education, training, licensure or experience.