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Compared to their civilian counterparts, Veterans have higher rates of mental health difficulties but are less likely to utilize health services. Since 2009, more than 1.4 million Veterans, service members, and their families have used the Post 9/11 GI Bill to fund their education, suggesting that college campuses are potential environments to reach Veterans with unmet health care needs. The Veterans Integration to Academic Leadership-Supported Education (VITAL-SEd) program was developed using psychiatric rehabilitation principles to provide in-person access to academic interventions, mental health programming, and access to additional services for unmet needs. The cases of three student Veterans are reported to demonstrate the implementation process and impact of VITAL-SEd in facilitating healthcare access and utilization among student Veterans. An outline of the VITAL-SEd model utilized is offered, and analyses of these three cases provided reveal the following practical implication themes: (1) responding to expressed educational needs helped build rapport and trust, thereby facilitating identification of unmet healthcare needs, (2) promoting Veteran choice and self-direction can shift student Veterans from a deficit to empowerment model of their own academic role, (3) using an integrated-health care lens within the context of SEd can help Veterans obtain both academic and health-management skills. Overall, results provide preliminary evidence of the usefulness and feasibility of the VITAL-SEd model.

The original version of this article unfortunately contained a mistake in co-author name and his affiliation. The author name should be Anthony Russo instead it was published as Antony Russo and his affiliation has been corrected.

Problem gambling is a common, highly destructive disorder which is often overlooked by clinicians. Levels of clinical training, clinical experience, and professional competence for providing clinical services for problem gambling were examined in a survey of 181 clinical psychologists working in the Veterans Healthcare Administration (VHA). The results suggest that the majority of clinical psychologists have little or no formal training and little or no past or current clinical experience in the treatment of disordered gambling, nor do they see themselves as competent to evaluate or treat patients with disordered gambling. Most have not referred patients for treatment of problem gambling and do not know of a competent provider to whom they can refer. There is an identifiable subgroup, representing 9% of respondents, who do have more training, provide services, and see themselves as competent to provide care for patients with problem gambling. The amount of formal training is positively correlated with care provided and self-ratings of competence. Despite the lack of training and experience, most respondents expressed interest in receiving additional training. These data suggest that to improve rates of diagnosis and treatment of patients with problem gambling in mental health settings, additional training needs to be made available for mental health providers as a group, with specialized training for clinicians interested in specializing in this area.