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Community-Based Recreational Therapy for Veterans with Behavioral Health Disorders: Impacts on Quality of Life, Participation, and Happiness

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Abstract

Identifying evidenced-based interventions that improve health outcomes for Veterans with behavioral health disorders is a national priority. Thus, this study examined the outcomes of a community-based recreational therapy (RT) program focused on health promotion for Veterans with behavioral health disorders. Fifty-five Veterans with disabilities completed pretest and posttest questionnaires that assessed Quality of Life (QOL), Participation, and Happiness. Significant improvements were found in Overall QOL, Environmental QOL, Psychological QOL, QOL Rated, Satisfaction with Health, Participation, and Happiness. Younger age and female gender were significantly associated with improved Overall QOL. Factors significantly associated with improved Environmental QOL included younger age and non-Caucasian race. Older age was significantly associated with improved Participation. Female gender was positively associated with improved Happiness, while being divorced/separated was negatively associated with Happiness. These results have important implications for the use and expansion of community-based RT health promotion programs for Veterans with behavioral health disorders.

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Funding

This implementation of the community-based recreational therapy program was funded by the Bob Woodruff Foundation; Operation Hat Trick; and VA Adaptive Sports Grant.

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Contributions

JLB, TT, PC, and JG contributed to the study conception and design. All authors contributed to material preparation, data collection and analysis. The first draft of the manuscript was written by JLB and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Jessie L. Bennett.

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The authors have no conflict of interest to declare that are relevant to the content of this article.

Ethical Approval

The questionnaire and methodology for this study was approved by the Human Research Ethics committee of The University of New Hampshire (Ethics approval number: 6175).

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Bennett, J.L., Craig, P., Aytur, S. et al. Community-Based Recreational Therapy for Veterans with Behavioral Health Disorders: Impacts on Quality of Life, Participation, and Happiness. Community Ment Health J 58, 1477–1486 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10597-022-00962-6

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