Use of College Mental Health Services Among Gender Minority Service Member and Student Veterans

Background/Purpose:Individuals who identify as a gender minority are among the most socially stigmatized of minorities. These individuals experience discrimination in a variety of settings, including employment, housing, public, health care, and postsecondary educational settings. Gender minority individuals have a distinctive set of mental health needs; and yet, these needs are often not met due to prejudices against them or lack of appropriate services. Gender minority is defined as people whose gender identity does not conform to their birth sex or falls outside of conventional gender constructions. It is estimated that that there are 150,000 gender minority individuals in the active military or veteran populations. Gender minority veterans account for five times the number of gender minority individuals within the general population, and have a higher likelihood to go to college/university than the general population. The purpose of this study was to explore the association between mental health symptoms and mental health service use in a national sample of gender minority service member and veteran students.

Methods:Data came from the fall 2013 National College Health Assessment II, conducted by the American College Health Association. Administered twice yearly, the sample comprised over 30,000 volunteer students from 44 post-secondary institutions across the United States. For the current study, our sample comprised 833 students who reported membership in the United States Armed Services. Logistic regression with a clustered sandwich estimator was used to model the associations. All statistical analyses were performed with Stata 13 for Windows.

Results:There were 11 service member and student veterans (1%) that identified as gender minority individuals. Most were white, identify as heterosexual or unsure, and reported problematic reactions to stressors and mental health symptoms, including 55% having seriously considered suicide and four percent having attempted suicide. Less than one percent reported ever receiving psychological or mental health services from their college/university’s Counseling or Health Service.  

Conclusions/Implications:Findings highlight the low prevalence of campus mental health service use among gender minority service member and veteran students on college/university campuses. Findings also reveal that the majority of these students reported a myriad of negative mental health symptoms. Previous studies have shown that service member and veteran students utilize mental health services on their college/university campuses at high rates. Even though gender minority service member and veteran students are experiencing a high level of mental health symptoms, they are not accessing mental health services on their college/university campuses. Understanding the relationship between mental health symptoms and use of campus mental health services will be important to appropriately serve this population of students whose mental health needs differ from the general student body and differ from the service member and veteran student population.