| Military service members and Veterans may be less likely to seek mental health services
than other populations (Hoge et al., 2004). Two factors that may be particularly salient for
therapist preferences in military populations are sharing a military or religious/spiritual
identification (Currier et al., 2018; Johnson et al., 2018). The current study is an investigation on
the impact that therapists’ Veteran and religious identity may or may not have on religious
military service members’ and Veterans’ preferences and evaluations of a therapist. Participants
(military service members and Veterans) were recruited through three sources: Amazon’s
Mechanical Turk (MTurk), an email list of Student Veterans from a Western university, and that
same Western university’s online student research participation platform (SONA). Participants
were randomly assigned to one of four video conditions where a fictitious therapist briefly
introduced himself and reported that he was religious, a Veteran, both, or neither. Participants
then evaluated the fictitious therapist’s effectiveness and credibility. Participants also reported
on their personal religiosity, military cultural identification, and preferences for treatment.
Results indicated that having multiple similar identities with a fictious therapist in terms of
religious and military identification does not seem to significantly improve evaluations of that
therapist; however, level of cultural identification was significantly related to preferences for
treatment. The results, limitations, future directions, and clinical implications are discussed.
Keywords: religiosity, spirituality, therapist evaluations, therapist preferences, military |