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More Than 1.3 Million Service Members and Dependents Are Geographically Remote for Behavioral Health Care

• Roughly 1.3 million individuals (some 300,000 service members and an additional 1 million dependents) were at risk of living in an area remote from behavioral health care.
• Remoteness is not a static property but a risk that any service member or dependent could encounter over time.
• Active component service members are more likely to be remote if they are older, higher ranking, more educated, and married; this pattern was not found for the National Guard/Reserves.

Remoteness Reduces Use of Behavioral Health Care

• Remote active component service members made fewer visits to any specialty behavioral care provider and made fewer psychotherapy visits than non-remote service members.
• There is some evidence of a substitution of non-specialist care for specialist care in the active component.

No Monitoring of Existing Policies and Programs Exists, but Some Promising Solutions Do

• Department of Defense maintains guidelines for access to care but there is no evidence of monitoring adherence to those guidelines.
• Two promising pathways for improving access to care among remote military populations are telehealth and collaborative care that integrates primary care with specialty behavioral care.