title: Promoting Help Seeking to Veterans.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Few studies have considered different messaging strategies that may augment campaign efficacy to generate help-seeking behaviors among populations at increased risk for suicide, mainly US military veterans.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  Findings are presented from the pilot evaluation of the It's Your Call campaign implemented by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). Three messaging strategies (with varying intensity and mix of messages) were compared to explore which best promote use of the Veterans Crisis Line (VCL) among veteran populations.
  
  
  METHODS
  Daily VCL call data were obtained for 10 US cities during 2011-2012 where the campaign was active, and modeled using Poisson regression to identify changes in utilization patterns associated with the implementation of different messaging strategies.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Significant increases in call rates were only evident during the campaign in communities where mixed messages were disseminated. Further, use of mixed messages yielded greater increases in call rates when compared with the other tested strategies. This was an observational study where identification of causal relationships between variables was limited.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Findings are encouraging as messaging was associated with help seeking, and they provide insights into strategies that may rapidly promote crisis line use. Results also underscore the need for further research on suicide prevention campaigns and dissemination practices.
authors: 1 VISN 2 Center of Excellence for Suicide Prevention, Department of Veterans Affairs, Canandaigua VA Medical Center, Canandaigua, NY, USA.|2 Department of Psychiatry, University of Rochester, NY, USA.
authors: Elizabeth
authors: E
authors: Karras
authors: 3 Department of Biostatistics and Computational Biology, University of Rochester, NY, USA.
authors: Naiji
authors: N
authors: Lu
authors: 1 VISN 2 Center of Excellence for Suicide Prevention, Department of Veterans Affairs, Canandaigua VA Medical Center, Canandaigua, NY, USA.|4 Department of Public Health Sciences, University of Rochester, NY, USA.
authors: Heather
authors: H
authors: Elder
authors: 2 Department of Psychiatry, University of Rochester, NY, USA.|3 Department of Biostatistics and Computational Biology, University of Rochester, NY, USA.
authors: Xin
authors: X
authors: Tu
authors: 5 Suicide Prevention Office, Department of Veterans Affairs, Washington, DC, USA.
authors: Caitlin
authors: C
authors: Thompson
authors: 6 Mental Health Services, Department of Veterans Affairs, Washington, DC, USA.
authors: Wendy
authors: W
authors: Tenhula
authors: 6 Mental Health Services, Department of Veterans Affairs, Washington, DC, USA.|7 Booz Allen Hamilton, Washington, DC, USA.
authors: Sonja V
authors: SV
authors: Batten
authors: 1 VISN 2 Center of Excellence for Suicide Prevention, Department of Veterans Affairs, Canandaigua VA Medical Center, Canandaigua, NY, USA.|5 Suicide Prevention Office, Department of Veterans Affairs, Washington, DC, USA.|8 Injury Control Research Center, West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV, USA.|9 Department of Behavioral Medicine, West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV, USA.
authors: Robert M
authors: RM
authors: Bossarte
mesh_terms: D006293:Health Promotion / Q000379:methods; D000066505:Help-Seeking Behavior; D015277:Hotlines / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D006801:Humans; D008402:Mass Media; D014481:United States; D014728:Veterans / Q000523:psychology*
keywords: campaigns; crisis line; military; public messaging; veterans