ArticleThe Journal of rural health : official journal of the American Rural Health Association and the National Rural Health Care Association2025
Phone-only mental health care within the Department of Veterans Affairs: Associations with rurality, age, sex, and clinical severity.
Article in The Journal of rural health : official journal of the American Rural Health Association and the National Rural Health Care Association, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
2 citing papers in PubMed.
- Comparative Outcomes of Video, Phone, and In-Person Mental Health Care.JAMA network open · 2026Article
- Provider and leadership attitudes toward telemental health at sites with high levels of video, phone, and in-person care: A qualitative analysis.Psychological services · 2026Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
8 authors.
Funding
Abstract
objectiveThis study explores factors associated with an increased likelihood of receiving mental health (MH) care exclusively via audio-only phone visits within the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA).
methodsIncluded patients had ≥1 VA MH outpatient encounter between October 1, 2021-September 30, 2022 and October 1, 2022-September 30, 2023. Patients were divided into a "phone only" group and an "all other" group, which encompassed all patients who did not exclusively receive phone care, including video and/or in-person care. Logistic regression models evaluated demographic and clinical predictors of receiving MH care via phone only.
resultsThe sample included 1,156,146 patients; 49,125 (4.25%) in the phone only group and 1,107,021 (95.75%) in the all other group. The following were associated with greater odds of receiving MH care via phone only in a multivariate model, all Ps<.0001: being highly rural (OR = 1.50), age 65+ (ORs ≥2.17), with fewer than 3 MH diagnoses (OR = 2.03), and >50% of MH visits conducted by a medical MH provider (OR = 1.87).
conclusionsPatients who were rural and older had greater odds of receiving MH care exclusively by phone. It will be important to assess whether this was by choice or whether they are experiencing barriers to accessing video or in-person care that could be addressed. Patients who were less clinically severe and were seen primarily by a medical MH provider were also more likely to receive phone-only care. Future research should examine the relative effectiveness of audio-only care as compared to video and in-person.
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