Promoting psychological health and overall wellness in female Veterans with military sexual trauma through complementary health Interventions: A pilot study
medRxiv – June 11, 2024
Source: medRxiv/bioRxiv/arXiv
Summary
Military Sexual Trauma significantly affects female Veterans, leading to serious health issues. A pilot study explored a multimodal approach combining complementary health interventions to enhance psychological health and overall wellness. Results showed improved mental and physical well-being, offering promising alternatives for treatment acceptance and effectiveness.
Abstract
Introduction Military Sexual Trauma (MST) has been associated with long-term negative outcomes such as increased rates of cardiovascular disease, PTSD, and suicidal thoughts and behaviors. While evidence supports the effectiveness of psychotherapeutic approaches as treatments for MST and related PTSD symptoms, these interventions have limited impact, attributed to perceived stigma with high dropout rates in female Veterans. Complementary and integrative health (CIH) interventions provide an alternative that may be more acceptable and can help transition Veterans into mental health treatments. Although research has found individual CIH interventions to be both effective and acceptable treatments for MST-related PTSD amongst female Veterans, lacking are evaluations of interventions that combine multiple CIH modalities or specifically in populations of at-risk female Veterans with history of suicidal ideation or behavior. Thus, this quality improvement project aimed to assess the impact of a multimodal CIH intervention on mental and physical health symptoms specifically in female Veterans with MST.