Wounded Warrior Project’s announcement of more than $100 million to continue to fund mental health care for military veterans nationwide includes approximately $21 million for Rush’s Road Home Program to drive three more years of innovative care that has already helped thousands of veterans address PTSD and other mental health challenges.
“The Road Home Program at Rush is a go-to center for veterans seeking support for mental health needs, especially those who experienced military sexual trauma,” said John Eaton, Wounded Warrior Project’s director of complex care. “The Road Home Program's specialized care is a prime example of how it collaborates with the Wounded Warrior Project and our Warrior Care Network partners to offer more effective solutions to some of the most pressing needs in the military community.”
The Road Home Program provides veterans of all eras, active-duty service members and their families with innovative, evidence-based mental and behavioral health care — regardless of discharge status or ability to pay. It is also one of four programs based at academic medical centers that comprise the Wounded Warrior Project’s Warrior Care Network, a partnership developed to help veterans and service members living with unseen wounds of military service like post-traumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injury and the mental health consequences of military sexual trauma.
Road Home therapists and researchers have developed and refined an accelerated treatment model for PTSD — the intensive outpatient program — in which groups of eight to 12 veterans are brought to Chicago where a team of specialists provide in just two weeks more therapy than is typically delivered during months of outpatient care.
Working in a space designed to treat military service-associated mental trauma, each specifically structured session combines individual and group-based cognitive behavioral therapy, art therapy, counseling and wellness programming that has been clinically proven to achieve sustained reduction in PTSD symptoms. More recently, specialized treatment programs have been developed to treat veterans who have been subjected to military sexual trauma.
“While deeper, broader Wounded Warrior Project and Road Home Program partnership translates directly into more years of hundreds of veterans getting the life-changing care they have earned, we pause on this day to reflect that every single day, Wounded Warrior Project generosity allows individuals — providers and warriors — to connect and heal ” said Robert Shulman, MD, acting chair of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, which oversees clinical operations at the Road Home Program.
“And because these funds come directly from individuals across our country who want the best for those who have served, Rush is deeply honored to be trusted to deliver that care.”
This is the third significant Wounded Warrior Project grant for the Road Home Program. The first grant in 2015 helped Rush mental and behavioral health experts create the intensive outpatient program approach and supported hundreds of veterans and service members through the program. A second grant in 2018 helped double the number of individuals treated, while also providing funds to expand the Road Home Program’s clinical space.
For more information about the Road Home Program’s impact on veterans, service members and families, please visit the website and the 2023 Road Home Program Impact Report.
