Advancing the Practice of Contemporary Military Performance Psychology:A Full-Spectrum Approach to Psychological Health and Readiness.

The Department of Defense (DoD) continues to emphasize operational readiness, lethality, and optimal performance. Performance psychology is a critical aspect of and central dimension to human performance optimization in support of Preservation of the Force and Family (POTFF) and Total Force Fitness (TFF). The delivery of performance psychology services must continue to evolve to maximize its potential for enhancing combat performance and supporting psychological readiness in warfighters across all branches of service. The authors (1) provide a brief history of the evolution of military psychology; (2) explore how performance psychology complements and broadens approaches to support warfighter health and readiness; and (3) present a set of strategies to advance performance psychology services toward an aspirational model. Such strategies will more effectively promote best practices to better target operational performance, complement existing health and medical service delivery, and encompass a systems approach to sustainable training. Moreover, these strategies aim to increase return on investment of psychological readiness efforts for warfighters across all branches of service.

ORION: A novel solution for tracking service members exposed to trauma and providing targeted outreach.

In response to the USS Fitzgerald (FTZ) and USS John S. McCain (JSM) collisions in 2017, Navy Medicine developed the Organizational Incident Operational Nexus (ORION) to track Service members and conduct targeted outreach (Caring Contacts) to those at elevated risk for psychological injury after unit-level, non-combat trauma exposure. A 1-year pilot was conducted to test the feasibility of implementing ORION. During the pilot, crews from the FTZ and JSM received Caring Contacts twice, once in winter/spring of 2018 and once in the summer/fall of 2018. Caring Contacts included reaching out to Service members over email, checking in with Service members over the phone, and connecting them to mental health resources, if desired. Sixty-two percent of the crews of the FTZ and JSM completed Caring Contacts. The Caring Contacts were well received and one in five Service members requested assistance connecting to mental healthcare through ORION. Additionally, all paygrades from enlisted to officers and 66% of Service members who separated from Service requested assistance connecting to mental healthcare through ORION. Findings from the Caring Contacts also demonstrated that 50% of the crews needed mental health support after the collision, with 30% of Sailors reporting accessing care since the collision and an additional 20% requesting care during the Caring Contacts. Overall, results suggest Service members greatly benefited from ORION's proactive approach to confidential outreach. Navy Medicine is now working toward implementing ORION throughout the enterprise and collecting more data to refine the program. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

A randomized controlled trial of cognitive-behavioral therapy, light therapy, and their combination for seasonal affective disorder.

This first controlled psychotherapy trial for seasonal affective disorder (SAD) compared SAD-tailored cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), light therapy (LT), and their combination to a concurrent wait-list control. Adults (N = 61) with major depression, recurrent with seasonal pattern, were randomized to one of four 6-week conditions: CBT (1.5-hr twice-weekly group therapy), LT (10,000-lux for 90-min/day with administration time individually adjusted), combined CBT + LT, or a minimal contact/delayed LT control (MCDT; LT following 6 weeks of monitoring). CBT, LT, and CBT + LT significantly and comparably improved depression severity relative to MCDT in intent-to-treat and completer samples. CBT + LT (73%) had a significantly higher remission rate than MCDT (20%). Using prospectively measured summer mood status to estimate the "functional" population, CBT + LT also had a significantly larger proportion of participants with clinically significant change over treatment compared with MCDT. The LT condition outcomes virtually replicated results from prior trials. CBT, alone or combined with LT, holds promise as an efficacious SAD treatment and warrants further study. If replicated, CBT + LT's remission rate would represent a clinically meaningful improvement over the 53% observed across LT studies.