Heart rate variability in unstably housed Veterans with mental health conditions.

Objective: Almost 10% of Veterans have experienced homelessness, which is associated with complex healthcare needs and high levels of physical and mental health comorbidities. Measures of autonomic nervous system dysregulation, including higher resting heart rate (HR) and lower time domain and higher frequency domain measures of heart rate variability (HRV), are associated with worse physical and mental health in Veteran and civilian populations. However, these associations have not been explored in unstably housed Veterans with mental health conditions.

Method: 43 male Veterans who were homeless/at-risk and receiving residential mental health treatment completed measures of HRV, neuropsychological performance, neuropsychiatric symptoms, and functioning. Time-domain and frequency-domain measures of HRV were calculated. Correlations between neuropsychological performance, symptoms, and HRV measures were computed. Multiple regression was used to examine predictors of variance in HRV variables.

Results: Higher HR and worse HRV metrics were significantly (p < .05) associated with worse physical health (r = 0.37-0.39), neuropsychological performance (r = 0.35-0.40), neuropsychiatric symptoms (r = 0.33-0.38), and functioning/disability (r = 0.39-0.50). Multiple linear regression revealed that symptom and neuropsychological variables explained 22-50% of the variance in HR and HRV.

Conclusions: HRV in Veterans may serve as a noninvasive biomarker correlate of healthcare needs in unstably housed Veterans.