The scope of the problem the issue addresses is considerable. Veterans experience elevated rates of a cluster of mental and behavioral health conditions, including posttraumatic stress disorder, chronic pain, sleep disturbances, substance use disorders, and heightened suicide risk. Alongside these well-recognized burdens sit more conventional chronic diseases that appear at higher rates in veteran populations than among civilian peers: asthma, cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, diabetes mellitus, and rheumatoid arthritis. National surveillance data cited by the editors indicate that veterans are more likely than nonveterans to live with multiple chronic conditions simultaneously, a pattern that turns routine clinical management into a complex balancing act involving behavioral, pharmacological, and social interventions.

Suicide prevention emerges as one of the most urgent threads running through the issue. Meta-analytic work on military and veteran populations has catalogued an extensive set of risk factors for suicidal ideation, attempts, and death, and the new studies extend that picture in a strikingly relational direction. One investigation of post-9/11 veterans found that parental well-being during the transition from military service to civilian life predicted veterans’ own suicidal ideation, suggesting that family-level variables belong alongside individual clinical factors in suicide risk assessment. Another study evaluated problem-solving therapy delivered within the Department of Veterans Affairs’ Suicide Prevention 2.0 clinical telehealth program, testing whether a structured cognitive intervention can reduce suicide-related outcomes when delivered remotely. Together, these contributions illustrate a shift in the field toward combining precision in risk prediction with scalable, technology-enabled delivery of care.

The military-to-civilian transition itself is treated as a critical behavioral window. Longitudinal research has documented the emergence of probable posttraumatic stress disorder among US veterans across the transition period, and the special issue includes an analysis of young adult veterans’ readjustment patterns following discharge, identifying predictors that could guide early intervention before problems consolidate into chronic conditions. A parallel qualitative and epidemiological literature on service members with service-connected disabilities shows that the transition is not a single event but an extended process shaped by employment, housing, social networks, and access to health care. For behavioral medicine, the implication is that prevention efforts timed to the months surrounding separation from service may yield disproportionate returns, a conclusion that several of the issue’s authors argue should reshape how screening and outreach are organized.

Chronic pain receives sustained attention throughout the collection, reflecting its status as one of the most common and disabling conditions in veteran care. One study documented that co-occurring chronic pain and PTSD is widespread among US military veterans and is associated with worse functioning, and the issue builds directly on that foundation with new work on women veterans, whose pain experiences are analyzed through mixed methods that capture the relational demands—caregiving, family obligations, and social expectations—that shape how pain is lived and managed. Another pair of studies followed combat veterans over time, finding that physical and emotional distress tolerance predict pain intensity and pain-related disability, and that gender, headache frequency, and headache intensity forecast psychosocial functioning and quality of life. A further analysis linked neuropathic and nociplastic pain conditions to health behaviors and mental health in veterans with type 2 diabetes, underscoring how pain, metabolic disease, and psychological distress intertwine.

Because pain and trauma so often co-occur, the issue also tackles the clinical question of how to treat both at once. A Delphi study—a structured consensus method in which expert panels iterate toward agreement—offers guidance for the simultaneous treatment of chronic pain and PTSD, an area where clinicians have historically lacked clear protocols. On the trauma side, a separate trial examined the process of prolonged exposure therapy for PTSD, finding that graduated exposure to traumatic events decreased distress during treatment, evidence that careful pacing of exposure can make one of the most effective available psychotherapies more tolerable without blunting its benefits. Complementing these, a national sample study identified the social determinants of health—housing stability, transportation, income, and social support among them—that predict whether veterans ever initiate evidence-based psychotherapy for PTSD in the first place, a reminder that even the best treatments fail when patients cannot reach them.

Sleep and substance use form a third cluster of studies with strong technical dimensions. The SEDATIVE trial tested a novel parallel-delivery model in which clinical pharmacists led deprescribing of sleep medications while patients simultaneously received clinician-supervised asynchronous cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia, an arrangement designed to reduce reliance on sedative-hypnotics whose long-term risks are increasingly recognized. Substance use research in the issue spans both epidemiology and intervention: national data show ongoing trends in substance use disorder diagnoses among veterans across a decade, contingency management—the systematic reinforcement of drug-free specimens—has been implemented at scale across the VA with measurable effects on attendance and substance use outcomes, and qualitative work in highly rural-serving VA hospitals documents veterans’ own views on alcohol use, their experiences of alcohol withdrawal syndrome treatment, and the pathways into subsequent alcohol use disorder care. A study of US Army Reserve and National Guard soldiers found that motherhood status exerted a protective effect on alcohol use relative to civilian women, complicating simple narratives about military service and drinking.

Digital health and telehealth innovations constitute perhaps the most forward-looking portion of the issue. A systematic review evaluated digital interventions targeting the impact of stress on stress-related mental health outcomes in military personnel and veterans, aggregating evidence across a rapidly proliferating landscape of apps and web-based programs. Implementation studies examined outcomes for virtual mental health care delivered to rural Native veterans, a population for whom geographic isolation, cultural factors, and historical mistrust of mainstream institutions create layered barriers to care. Qualitative research explored veterans’ needs and perceptions regarding telemental healthcare among veterans with spinal cord injuries, a group whose mobility limitations make remote care especially consequential. Additional work on tobacco and nicotine cessation assessed the implications for Area Health Education Centers, and a pilot study described the development, implementation, and acceptability of an acceptance and commitment therapy-based intervention aimed at promoting brain health in older veterans, extending behavioral medicine into the realm of cognitive aging.

Peer support and whole-health models round out the collection’s care-innovation themes. A mixed methods two-phase pilot study evaluated peer support for whole health, testing whether veterans trained as peers can help fellow veterans engage with self-management, prevention, and wellness-oriented goals. This work connects to the VA’s broader Whole Health System, which has integrated complementary and integrative health approaches into conventional care and represents one of the largest experiments in person-centered medicine anywhere in American health care. The editors place these innovations in a long historical arc: behavioral principles entered federal veteran care as early as the 1950s, when psychologists developed programs in tuberculosis hospitals serving veterans, and the field has since grown into a discipline that spans psychotherapy, health behavior change, technology-mediated care, and systems engineering.

What unifies the twenty articles, the editors argue, is a shared recognition that improving veterans’ health requires acting simultaneously at multiple levels. Addressing social and structural determinants of health, expanding access to evidence-based interventions, and deploying innovative models of care—telehealth, digital therapeutics, peer support, pharmacist-led deprescribing, and implementation science methods that systematically close the gap between what is known and what is delivered—are presented not as alternatives but as complementary strategies. The special issue’s call for papers had explicitly invited work on resilience, posttraumatic growth, and strengths-based research alongside deficit-focused studies, and the resulting collection reflects that balance, treating veterans not merely as carriers of risk but as people whose families, communities, and life courses shape and are shaped by their health. For a population whose service produces obligations that extend across generations, the editors conclude, behavioral medicine is positioned to be both the science of that burden and the source of its relief.

Subject of Research: Behavioral medicine research on the mental and physical health of military veterans

Article Title: Military veterans and behavioral medicine: introduction to the special issue

Article References: Military veterans and behavioral medicine: introduction to the special issue. (n.d.). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10865-026-00706-x

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s10865-026-00706-x

Keywords: military veterans, behavioral medicine, PTSD, suicide prevention, chronic pain, telehealth, digital therapeutics, peer support, implementation science, military-to-civilian transition, chronic disease self-management, sleep disorders