Veteran’s Mental Health Project

What is the toughest challenge facing the veteran community right now? 

No matter what it is, you likely have the experts in the room doing their best to create new policies, new programs, or to revise initiatives in an attempt to drive different outcomes.

But, do you have the people closest to the problem in the room?

How can you be sure your solutions will work if the target audience isn’t helping to co-create them or at least providing vulnerable feedback on what will work or what won’t?

In April 2022, ATOMA began a Veteran Community Co-design series in Western Michigan to answer this very question: What is the toughest challenge facing the veteran community here? The answer was loud and clear: veteran suicide consistently is the biggest problem facing the community. With that, we went to work.

We recruited five veterans to join our team as “community co-designers.” At their direction, we focused the project on supporting veterans who receive calls from other veterans experiencing suicidal ideation or other mental health crises. The first phase of this project produced two co-created prototypes that were piloted for several months in Western Michigan. Early testing of the prototypes with veterans revealed significant support for these newly crafted solutions and provided confirmation that the community co-design ideas filled gaps and helped veterans who regularly field these crisis calls feel more supported.