Despite the relatively high availability of free or low-cost psychological care many service members and veterans choose not to seek services (Vogt et al., 2014). This paper aimed to investigate whether military culture moderates the relationship between stigma and help-seeking intentions among service members. Prior work has suggested that service member underutilization of services may be the result of military culture and its emphasis on placing the mission above personal needs but this finding has not been clearly demonstrated in the literature. The findings of this study revealed that high commitment to military values coupled with heightened perceptions of stigma may play an important role in a service member’s decision to seek out psychological treatment. These results lend support to the effects of commitment to core military values and perceived stigma on psychological help-seeking intentions and demonstrate the need to consider these factors when tailoring psychological interventions for military personnel.

Seventy percent of service members identify as religious, and an accumulation of evidence supports the protective role religiosity may play in buffering mental health outcomes; therefore, it is important to examine if religion acts as a buffer for these individuals. Guided by religious coping theory, this study examined whether religiosity moderated the effect of combat exposure on depression in a sample of U.S. Army Soldiers (N=10,666). Data were drawn from the All Army Study (AAS) component of the larger Army Study to Assess Risk and Resilience in Servicemembers (STARRS) dataset. Using moderated path analysis, findings suggest that religiosity moderated the association between combat exposure and depression, such that higher levels of religiosity were associated with a lower impact of combat exposure on depression. Implications for military helping professionals include identifying leverage points for intervention such as during reintegration, particularly for Soldiers who identify religion to be important to them.