Wellness checks: Piloting a universal intervention for soldiers

As part of an Army pilot program, mandatory annual wellness checks were initiated to introduce individuals to counseling and to support psychological resilience and thriving. The program was evaluated using a cross-sectional survey completed by 7,831 soldiers. Findings revealed that about half of soldiers who reported a wellness check rated the check at least moderately helpful in their professional and personal lives. Participants receiving a wellness check reported being more likely to report willingness to seek help if they were to have mental health problems and to report higher levels of resilience and thriving even after controlling for rank, age, education, months in the unit, and trait negative affect. Participants were also less likely to report stigma-related concerns compared to those who had not received a wellness check. Consistent with theory on the common factors in counseling and the contextual model of psychotherapy (Laska et al., 2014), feeling listened to and learning new skills partially mediated the association between perceived wellness check usefulness and study outcomes, although acquiring a new perspective about problems did not. While not a randomized trial, this evaluation suggests that wellness checks are associated with programmatic goals: improved attitudes toward care seeking, resilience, and thriving. Future work should consider ways to ensure counselors address therapeutic common factors and should use a randomized, longitudinal design. Study findings have implications for implementing programs like wellness checks for military personnel and others working in high-stress occupations like first responders. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).