Reducing Firearm Suicide Among Veterans: Evaluating the Effectiveness of Peer-Delivered Lethal Means Counseling

PEERS involves a one-on-one session with a firearm-owning Veteran peer interventionist. The appointment will last between 15 minutes and one hour, and the modality (i.e., in-person or virtual) will be based on Veteran participant preference. Principal components of the PEERS session will include: 1) engaging - initiating conversation in a non-confrontational manner; 2) focusing - quickly concentrating the discussion on the topic of firearms and means safety; 3) evoking - reflecting the participants' reasons both for and against engaging in means safety, leveraging the participants' own rationale for change as a tool for increasing behavior change; and 4) planning - once a plan is agreed upon, this information is put into writing. Participants will also be provided the same psychoeducational materials provided to the participants in the active control condition.

"Veterans will receive no treatment and will not interact with peers. A no treatment control condition was selected due to the preventative nature of PEERS, as well as the early stage of evaluation for this intervention. However, given the varied recruitment outlets and subsequent lack of standardized usual care, as well as ethical concerns with not providing important resources to firearm owning Veterans, two informational handouts will be added to this control condition. Specifically, Veterans in this condition will be provided with an informational handout developed by the National Sports Shooting Foundation, which includes a variety of secure firearm storage options, as well as a handout listing national mental health and suicide prevention resources."