Using Mindfulness to Improve the Lives of Veterans in Australia 

Body & Mind helps veterans access preventive support anywhere, anytime, to promote mental health and well-being.

a group of veterans sitting around a table talking

A guest blog by Richard Allen and Alysa Bucknall, Body & Mind

6 min read

How can we do better?” That’s the question driving our work to improve the lives of veterans, police officers, and other Australians. At Body & Mind, we put ourselves in the shoes of the people we serve, walk their journeys alongside them, and constantly seek more effective ways to support their mental health and well-being. This commitment led us to create a comprehensive wellness program for veterans centered around mindfulness.

After witnessing firsthand the mental health crisis of veterans and active military, Jane McFadden founded Body & Mind in 2019 to make a difference in their lives. Today, our Brisbane-based organisation serves about 5,000 veterans across Australia with more than 110 practitioners. Based on the success of our work with the veteran community, we’re expanding our programs to serve the Queensland Police Service and general population, too.

Focusing on prevention rather than crisis

Transitioning to civilian life after serving in the military, no matter the length of service, can present unique challenges and be a lonely experience. Stress, anxiety, depression, and post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are the most common emotional and mental health concerns we see among the veterans we serve. We want to be there for them and provide support to address these challenges before they escalate to a crisis.  

Accordingly, we run our veteran’s program as a preventative mental health mindfulness model. Body & Mind is not a crisis service or emergency hotline; instead, we’re making sure veterans can access the support they need to build resilience, get better sleep, and promote overall mental health and well-being. It’s about giving them access to preventive care and not leaving them on their own to believe they’ll simply “get over it.”

Our veterans’ program comprises four types of support:

  • Weekly 20-minute telehealth sessions with a registered mental health practitioner that veterans can use to talk about anything that comes up in life.
  • At our Health Super Clinics, veterans can meet in person with one of our mental health practitioners or other allied health services.  
  • Online access to a community of peers gives veterans an opportunity to connect with peers who have shared experiences, form lifelong friendships, and create accountability partners. 
  • Unlimited, no-cost access to mindfulness resources, including the Calm app, yoga, and art therapy, to help veterans manage stress and anxiousness, build resilience, get better sleep, and enrich their lives.

Our number one goal is ensuring veterans have access to the services they’re entitled to whenever they need them, because we don’t think that patient care starts at zero minutes and ends at 20. Support has to be there when they can’t sleep at 3 am or feel overwhelmed at work, not just when they’re talking with their practitioner.

Helping veterans take the first step

Of course, improving access to mental health care is only part of the solution. We also need to help veterans take the first step to try our resources, which can be a hurdle. As you can imagine, mental health support can feel daunting or intimidating to many veterans, so we try to frame our services in a more palatable way. We call our practitioners “mindfulness coaches” and offer a “mindfulness model” rather than “psychology services,” for example, to help them get started.

Using remote telehealth, rather than requiring in-person services, is another key to increasing access and engagement. Our mindfulness coaches sit remotely across Australia, allowing us to serve veterans in every time zone. And with telehealth, our veterans don’t need to walk into a brick and mortar location or sit in a waiting room to be seen by the local psychologist. They can talk to their coach from the comfort and privacy of their home or any other location they choose.

And finally, it’s important to normalize their mental health experience. We help them understand they’re not the odd one out—that the majority of people, about 70%, are likely to experience some sort of mental health crisis or issues in their lifetime. It’s a part of life, and if you can be proactive, you’re going to better manage that part of your life and improve your outcomes. Once they start our program and begin to see the benefits, their attitude changes quite dramatically.

Keeping veterans engaged in their mental health

The next challenge is keeping them coming back, and to do that, we had to overcome some limitations in our programs. First, the mindfulness platform that we developed internally at Body & Mind required veterans to use a laptop computer to log in; it wasn’t mobile-friendly. On top of that, we weren’t able to innovate fast enough to keep our veterans interested and engaged. We needed the ability to deliver new content and a variety of narrators more rapidly.

Selecting Calm for our mindfulness platform

In 2022, we decided to do a direct comparison of our internal platform and Calm, and we quickly saw that Calm could provide the services we were looking to bring to our veterans. Above all, what stood out was the variety of content, the variety of presenters, and the connection to the different types of issues we deal with, such as stress, anxiety, and sleep problems. And because Calm is accessible via their phones with support for seven languages, veterans can access resources from anywhere, anytime, solving a key accessibility issue for us. 

Boosting engagement in Calm

The high rate of adoption of Calm that we saw during the onboarding process speaks volumes of the Calm brand. Although we marketed the Calm launch to our veterans, many already were familiar with Calm and trusted the brand.

To boost engagement, we promote Calm programs in our weekly emails to the community, including new content in the app highlighted in Calm’s monthly communications. For example, we launched a parenting master class that Calm had featured in a monthly engagement strategy and got incredible feedback. We also promote Calm consumer blogs and support a Facebook community as part of a multi-pronged communications effort.

Measuring adoption and engagement

In Calm’s partner portal, we can see the number of sign-ups, ongoing engagement statistics, as well as the number of end users signed up per practitioner, to make sure our practitioners are promoting our messages as well. Our results have exceeded our expectations: 60% of the veterans we support have enrolled in Calm, and 85% continue to use the app on a regular basis, showing that they’re getting real benefit from Calm content.

Veterans are benefitting from our programs

In particular, Calm is helping veterans significantly improve their sleep. A number of our clients have told us they used to get about three hours of sleep a night, but after using Calm Sleep Stories, sleep meditations, or sleep landscapes, they’re consistently getting at least six hours of sleep a night. Here are a few of the comments they’ve shared with us about using Calm:

  • “I use the app at the end of my day to wind down and regroup. I find that listening to one of the music sleep recordings enables me to do this as music is an important part of my life.”
  • “It’s an excellent resource to have. So easy to access and come back to at any time. The app has greatly improved my sleep habits.”
  • “It means I can access tools myself when I need them to help me with my mindfulness journey. As a shift worker, this has helped me to reduce stress after work and style into home routines.”
  • “When I’m panicking I have an easy go-to when I can’t think.”

Mindfulness is key to making an impact

The impact we’re making in the lives of veterans comes from combining evidence-based mindfulness practices with ongoing psychological support. You can’t simply offer an app and expect changes that really matter. You also can’t expect one weekly session with a psychologist to suffice. But combining the two—giving people the opportunity to engage in their mental health in a variety of ways and on their own terms anytime or anywhere—can make a significant impact on their mental health and well-being.

We’re excited to keep asking “how can we do better?” and see how far we can go from here to improve the lives of veterans and others in Australia.




Connect with our Calm specialists today and see how we can help you prioritize mental health initiatives.

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