Challenging Veteran Stigma Through Collaborative Research-based Theater (original) (raw)
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Journal of Veterans Studies, 2021
The media stereotypes military veterans as damaged beings or indestructible heroes, often forming implicit and explicit biases that impact medical and health providers' capability to connect emotionally with veterans. This educational tool uses interactive theater to challenge veteran stigma, enhance empathy, and increase learners' ability to talk to veterans about their service. This 90-minute session includes an interactive theater performance where learners recite verbatim veteran interview excerpts. This article contains all the materials necessary to replicate this activity in the appendices. The performance is prefaced with an introduction of the script, how it was developed and directions for engaging in the session. The session is facilitated by faculty knowledgeable in veteran culture and care who led post-performance discussion. Electronic survey data provides quantitative and qualitative assessment of learners' attitudes, beliefs, and quality of the session. Learner satisfaction revealed satisfaction among all questions asked, which including the following dimensions: instructional format, session content, impact of content. Qualitative results illustrated a newfound awareness of the diversity of military experience, personal bias, and the impact of social stigma on veteran health. Addressing stigma in the vulnerable veteran population is challenging. This one-time intervention called for learners to confront their biases and showed a short-term impact that may improve clinical care of veterans. Future research should address long-term impact on patient care and clinical outcomes.
Civilian and Veteran Perceptions of Communicated Stigma about Veterans with PTSD
2019
Mental health problems are considered some of the most common and disabling medical conditions that affect military service members. Veterans with PTSD need mental health services but are often reluctant to seek them due to perceived stigma. In this study, we used Smith’s (2007) stigma communication framework to analyze veterans’ and civilians’ perceptions of combat-related PTSD. Findings from our study indicate that, although participants were exposed to stigma communication about veterans with PTSD, most stigmatizing labels were considered inaccurate. Further, participants perceived that discourse about veterans infrequently implied that veterans were personally responsible for developing and overcoming PTSD. These findings indicate that perhaps efforts to destigmatize mental health issues, and PTSD among veterans specifically, have been successful.
Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 2020
Veteran community engagement is an evolving discipline informed by traditional community-based participatory research, veteran studies, and veterans themselves. This Special Issue suggests that research collaborations including military veterans, soldiers, and their families as co-researchers is a critical next step toward a designing thinking perspective in social and healthcare systems for this population. This Special Issue was conceptualized through a veteran community-academic partnership formed over a decade ago. We briefly describe the activities of this partnership from 2008 to present in order to frame the praxis considerations within this issue. The partnership hosted several Warrior Summit conferences from 2013 to present, with the last of this series calling for academic contributions. The resulting papers drawn from the conference and other authors form this issue, and include a wide range of topics: Arts-and theater-based interventions for PTSD; engaging veteran college students in higher education; combining strengths
Veteran-centred content in medical education
The clinical teacher, 2018
Veterans have unique experiences that warrant special consideration in health care. Unfortunately, training in veteran-centred care has not been a clear focus of medical education, and only a very small proportion of medical schools include military cultural competency in their curricula. We conducted an 80-minute focus group with six US veterans. Open-ended questions were used to elicit their perceptions of the health care that they receive, and how it can be improved. The audio-recording was transcribed verbatim and coded for thematic content. A phenomenological analytic approach was used to analyse the 31-page transcript and arrive at the final themes. Former service members from various periods of conflict (e.g. World War II, Vietnam, Persian Gulf) offered key insights about how to improve veterans' health care experiences. Veterans suggested that consideration of their previous military service would improve care. They lamented that the lack of military consciousness is a b...