Suicide in Veterans - ALERT – act together to prevent suicide

Achieving a satisfactory quality of life is more difficult for those who have experienced societal oppression. People may well make sense of their own experiences in a different way than professionals, e.g., highlighting mental illness as rooted in structural oppression rather than individual biology. Peer-led support can help, as well as community engagement with services and routes into activism. It will be harder for people in this group to build healthy social networks, find meaningful roles, and achieve well-being and a strong sense of self. Like other people facing exclusion, they may wish to work to change mainstream society even as they move towards it This has informed the construction of the Scottish Veterans Wellbeing Alliance which will be the focus of the ALERT study.

One is Too Many project: ALERT – act together to prevent suicide: Working across the Scottish public and 3rd sector and informed by veterans, ALERT will deliver, research, innovate, teach, and disseminate evidence-based innovations which support veterans at risk of suicide ensuring a specific focus on veterans who are most at risk, whether that is through identity, interest, or place.

• Conduct a comprehensive review of the existing literature relating to veterans’ self-harm and suicidal presentations.
• Review existing evidence on which monitoring, and assessment tools will be used across intervention.
• Implementation of adapted Interpersonal Psychotherapy for veterans (IPT-V) and examination of the effectiveness.
• Examine the effectiveness of existing social prescribing initiatives delivered by the Wellbeing Alliance, including the exploration of engagement techniques and activities to understand the current practices. This will be achieved using questionnaires, interviews, and focus groups of Veterans, Service Providers and Family members.
• Verification and dissemination of key findings across the UK through appreciative inquiry workshops with key stakeholders, veterans, and respondents. 

The Alliance partners constitute a powerful multidisciplinary team who between them represent all the key skills and interventions necessary to deliver a positive evidence-based care package to meet the needs of vulnerable veterans and their families. We will use our substantial health and social care connections to work with the range of NHS and 3rd sector services who are delivering both veterans specific clinical services (5 VIP Centres and Combat Stress). mainstream clinical services who are also working with veterans in acute hospital settings and GP Primary Care Teams. and with residential settings including care and nursing homes. In light of the increased risk factors for early service leavers we will strengthen our in-reach connections to the Armed Services contributing our knowledge and learning from the experiences of military personnel discharge planning work with early services leavers. We will foster our relationship with the informal grouping of veterans who came together to develop contributions to the Scottish Veterans Mental Health Action Plan. (Dr Irvine Fitzpatrick chaired the group who developed the plan which was approved by the Scottish Parliament in February 2022).