A Randomized Controlled Trial of Coaching Into Care With VA-CRAFT to Promote Veteran Engagement in PTSD Care

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) afflicts many war Veterans, but often they are reluctant to seek help despite availability of effective treatments. Family members are key sources of support who can help encourage such Veterans to initiate mental health services. Toward that goal, VA provides telephone coaching to family members through its Coaching Into Care (CIC) program to help get their Veterans into care. While CIC enjoys high caller satisfaction, it has shown only modest success getting Veterans into care. Blended interventions that include professional support and technology-based interventions offer promise for improving effectiveness of services. Therefore, this study tests an intervention that blends CIC calls with a web program called VA Community Reinforcement and Family Training (VA-CRAFT). VA-CRAFT is a translation of an empirically-validated model intended to help Veterans by training their family members to effectively promote care-seeking. If successful, this approach will support families and help more Veterans receive needed mental health care for PTSD.

Inclusion Criteria: The target population consists of partners and first-degree family members who are in regular contact with a Veteran from any service era who believe that their Veteran is suffering from significant symptoms of PTSD and in need of mental health care. Inclusion criteria are: * reporting being in an intimate relationship (dating, engaged, or married) with a Veteran or a first degree family member of a Veteran * reporting that their Veteran is not engaged in mental health care and has not been for the past 6 months * reporting perceived symptoms of PTSD in their Veteran * reporting frequent contact with their Veteran (some verbal or face-to-face contact for 36 of the past 90 days) * having regular access to the Internet and a telephone; and 6) being 18 years of age or older Exclusion Criteria: * reporting by the potential participant that they are subject to domestic violence and may not feel safe engaging in CIC+VA-CRAFT activities * we will exclude partners reporting severe intimate partner violence on the brief Conflict Tactics Scale 2 Short Form with their Veteran in the past 6 months * appropriate referrals for those excluded based on recent intimate partner violence will be provided