Mental health and treatment needs of UK ex-service personnel: v1
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Mental health needs and treatment needs of UK ex-service personnel accessing IAPT services in England
IRAS ID
224664
Contact name
Deirdre MacManus
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
King's College London
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 5 months, 30 days
Research summary
Providing for the mental health needs of veterans is a UK government priority. In order to ensure that we have services that meet the needs of this population we must know if and how their mental health differs from the general population of NHS mental health service users and whether or not generic treatments offered by NHS services are as effective for those who have served in the military.
In the UK, there have been no formal comparisons of how the mental health of help-seeking veterans may differ to help-seeking non-veterans. Currently the majority of veterans with mild to moderate mental health problems, such as non-severe post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anxiety disorders and depression, are likely to receive psychological treatment in generic NHS Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) services if they seek care in England which is where IAPT operates. There is, however, no data robustly examining whether these generic treatments are effective for veterans and whether the outcomes differ to non-veterans.The current study will be able to address these issues by examining nationally collected data from NHS IAPT services and comparing the clinical presentations and treatment outcomes of veterans with non-veterans.
The outcomes of this study will be (i) important data on the clinical characteristics of the veterans who access generic NHS psychological services compared to the non-veterans, (ii) whether or not these generic services are as effective for this population compared to the non-veterans who access them, and (iii) how treatment outcomes may vary by clinical subgroup (e.g. diagnosis, severity of symptoms, comorbidity etc).
REC name
West Midlands - South Birmingham Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
17/WM/0147
Date of REC Opinion
19 Apr 2017
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion