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Likelihood of Attending Treatment for Anxiety Among Veteran Primary Care Patients: Patient Preferences for Treatment Attributes

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Abstract

Anxiety is common, but under-treated, in primary care. Behavioral health providers embedded in primary care can help address this treatment gap. Guidance on anxiety treatment preferences would help inform tailoring of clinical practice and new interventions to be more patient-centered and increase treatment engagement. We surveyed 144 non-treatment seeking Veteran primary care patients (82.6 % male, 85.4 % White, age M = 59.8 years, SD = 13.9) reporting current anxiety symptoms (M = 13.87, SD = 3.66, on the Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 Questionnaire) on their likelihood of attending anxiety treatment featuring various levels of 11 attributes (modality, type, location, format, provider, visit frequency, visit length, treatment duration, type of psychotherapy, symptom focus, and topic/skill). Participants indicated clear preferences for individual, face-to-face treatment in primary care, occurring once a month for at least 30 min and lasting at least three sessions. They also tended to prefer a stress management approach focused on trouble sleeping or fatigue, but all topics/skills were rated equivalently. For most attributes, the highest rated options were consistent with characteristics of integrated care. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

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Acknowledgments

The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not reflect the views of the Department of Veterans Affairs or the United States government. This material is the result of work supported with resources and the use of facilities at the VA VISN 2 Center for Integrated Healthcare at the Syracuse VA Medical Center.

Funding

This research was supported by a pilot grant from the VA VISN 2 Center for Integrated Healthcare. The funding source had no role in the study design; collection, analysis, and interpretation of data; writing of the manuscript; or decision to submit the manuscript for publication.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Integrated Healthcare, Syracuse VA Medical Center, 800 Irving Avenue (116C), Syracuse, NY, 13210, USA

    Robyn L. Shepardson & Jennifer S. Funderburk

  2. Department of Psychology, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY, USA

    Robyn L. Shepardson & Jennifer S. Funderburk

  3. Department of Psychiatry, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, USA

    Jennifer S. Funderburk

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  1. Robyn L. Shepardson
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  2. Jennifer S. Funderburk
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Correspondence to Robyn L. Shepardson.

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Conflict of Interest

Robyn L. Shepardson and Jennifer S. Funderburk declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Human Rights and Informed Consent

All procedures were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation of the Syracuse VA Medical Center and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2000. This study was approved by the Institutional Review Board of the Syracuse VA Medical Center. Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

Animal Research

This article does not contain any studies with animals performed by any of the authors.

Additional information

The results of this study were presented at the Anxiety and Depression Association of America (ADAA) Anxiety and Depression Conference in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in April 2016.

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Shepardson, R.L., Funderburk, J.S. Likelihood of Attending Treatment for Anxiety Among Veteran Primary Care Patients: Patient Preferences for Treatment Attributes. J Clin Psychol Med Settings 23, 225–239 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10880-016-9462-y

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