Virtual Mental Health Care and Suicide-Related Events.

Abstract

Importance: The rising suicide rates in the US emphasize the need for effective prevention. While telehealth has transformed access to mental health care, the impact of telehealth on suicide outcomes is unknown.

Objective: To evaluate the association of virtual mental health services with individual-level suicide-related events (SREs).

Design, setting, and participants: This retrospective cohort study using broadband access as an instrumental variable assessed a national sample of Veterans Health Administration patients who received mental health care between March 1, 2020, and December 31, 2021. Participants were recently separated (ie, discharged or released from active duty) veterans who completed their active duty service between March 1, 2019, and December 31, 2020, and who received at least 2 outpatient or inpatient diagnoses related to major depressive disorder, substance use disorder, or posttraumatic stress disorder within the year before their most recent separation date. Data were analyzed May 1 to October 31, 2023.

Exposure: Percentage of a patient's total mental health visits that were conducted virtually by psychiatrists, psychologists, or social workers within a calendar month.

Main outcomes and measures: Binary measure indicating whether the patient had experienced an SRE (defined as a nonfatal suicide attempt, intentional self-harm, or suicide death) in a specific month and year as evaluated an instrumental variable probit model.

Results: The sample included 66 387 data points from 16 236 unique recently separated veterans. Among these entries, 44 766 were for male veterans (67.4%), the mean (SD) age across the sample was 32.9 (8.9) years, and the sample was representative of the US veteran population. There were 929 SREs (1.4%). Virtual mental health visits comprised a mean (SD) of 44.6% (46.1%) of all mental health visits. In instrumental variable probit analyses accounting for factors simultaneously associated with use of virtual mental health care and SRE risk, a 1% increase in the probability of virtual mental health visits was associated with a 2.5% decrease in SREs.

Conclusions and relevance: Findings from this cohort study using a retrospective quasi-experimental design found that an increase in virtual mental health visits relative to total visits was associated with a statistically significant decrease in SREs, suggesting that providing virtual mental health services may reduce suicide-related outcomes.