Social Work with Veterans in Rural Communities: Perceptions of Stigma as a Barrier to Accessing Mental Health Care

The nearly decade long efforts in the Global War on Terror have led to increasing numbers of Veterans of the armed services returning to rural locations, but little is known about their needs. However, recent research suggests that rural Veterans face a host of issues, but perhaps more importantly, are facing heightened levels of stigma in rural areas related to their health and mental health. This paper examines how mental health stigma in the military may feed into stigma in rural communities and serve as an additional barrier for Veterans in rural areas who are struggling with mental health concerns. Recommendations for the unique role of social workers in serving these Veterans, as well as addressing community issues around stigma, are addressed

Improving Assessment of Race, Ethnicity, and Culture to Further Veteran PTSD Research.

Objective: Racial and ethnic disparities in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and its treatment have been documented for both civilians and military veterans. To better understand the presence of disparities and factors that might contribute to them, accurate assessment of race and ethnicity is critical; however there still remains unstandardized assessment and challenges to implementation. The authors highlight specific problems in the assessment of race and ethnicity in research, such as missing data, misclassification, classification categories too limited to reflect many peoples\u27 social identities, and inappropriate aggregation of ethnoracial subgroups. Conclusions: A proposal is made for a minimal uniform assessment standard of race and ethnicity. Additional recommendations incorporate principles proposed by the Institute of Medicine that allow for more granular assessment of race and ethnicity to better capture individual identity and cultural factors as they relate to the assessment, experience and management of PTSD