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Symposia

Military and Veterans Psychology

Bridging the Gap between Military Culture and Cognitive Behavioral Psychology Research

1 - (SYM 61) Using Warrior Culture Recruiting for Online Randomized Controlled Trials of Military Suicide

Sunday, November 23, 2025
12:06 PM - 12:27 PM CST
Location: Strand 12 A&B, Level 2
Keywords: Military, Suicide, Implementation
Recommended Readings: Bryan, C. J., & Morrow, C. E. (2011). Circumventing mental health stigma by embracing the warrior culture: Lessons learned from the Defender's Edge program. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 42(1), 16.,   Stanley, I. H., Embrey, E. P., & Bebarta, V. S. (2024). Actualizing Military Suicide Prevention Through Digital Health Modernization. JAMA psychiatry, 81(12), 1173-1174.,   Bond, A. E., Moceri‐Brooks, J., Bandel, S. L., Crifasi, C., Bryan, C. J., Capron, D. W., ... & Anestis, M. D. (2024). Determining who military service members deem credible to discuss firearm safety for suicide prevention. Suicide and Life‐Threatening Behavior, 54(3), 584-592.,   ,  
Abstract Body

 Consistent with research on “warrior culture” (Bryan & Morrow, 2011), one potential method to increase treatment seeking behavior is to identify at-risk soldiers by focusing on non-stigmatized, or ideally, positively-perceived traits that are nonetheless associated with increased suicide risk. Fearlessness about death (FAD) is one possible construct that meets these criteria (Van Orden et al., 2010).  The aim of this study was to test a “warrior culture” consistent recruitment method in a semi-controlled popular and accessible online environment (e.g., Reddit). Based on extant literature on “warrior culture” and treatment seeking we hypothesized 1) soldiers will more readily present for studies that focus on traits they see as strengths (FAD) than weaknesses/vulnerabilities (mental health problems), 2) Guard members who are interested in a FAD study (versus Mental health) will be more likely to be higher risk (e.g., higher FAD). 
Methods: Recruitment fliers were posted online on National Guard relevant subreddits (see appendix for examples) between January 2021 and April 2022.  These fliers advertised for two studies simultaneously: 1) “ study on mental health problems” 2) “study on fearlessness about death”.  All information and design were identical between the two except for the subject (as written above) and the hyperlink to find out more information about the study.  Study interest was operationalized as the number of people who responded to each link.  
Results: Overall, the results were opposite of our hypothesis: 99 (79.83%) of valid link clicks were for the “mental health problems study”, with 12 clicking the fearlessness about death study only and 13 clicking both studies. “Boths” and “Fearless only” were virtually indistinguishable on all variables, thus they were combined into a “Fearless” group, for comparisons with the “Mental Health” group. Chi-square tests indicated that the percentage of eligible participants (FAD > 17) was marginally significantly higher (p = .051) in the Fearless group (60%) than in the MH group (38%). Two-sided independent t-tests indicated that the “Fearless” group had a marginally significantly higher FAD total score (p = .058) and lower mean age (p = .069). 
Conclusion:  Future work needs to make even greater efforts to increase the amount of eligible participants for military suicide research.