Implementing a home-based suicide prevention program with rural veterans.

Abstract

Veterans living in rural areas are at elevated risk for suicide compared with the veteran population as a whole. The Home-Based Mental Health Evaluation (HOME) program is an evidence-based suicide prevention intervention for veteran patients being discharged from a psychiatric hospitalization. The initial program was developed and tested with patients returning to nonrural home environments. The current article aims to describe the feasibility of adapting the HOME program when implemented with rural patients at a new facility in a new region of the country. Implementing and adapting the clinical HOME program for rural veteran patients did not require a significantly different approach to achieve similar levels of program engagement as the original research trial. Despite the ease with which these adaptations were made, the barrier of distance remained an obstacle to delivering home-based interventions to rural patients. Methods of addressing barriers to program and treatment engagement are offered for future adaptations of this and other in-home mental health-care programs for rural patients.