The CAMS clinician endeavors to understand their patient’s suffering from an empathic, non-judgmental perspective.
Providers in Over 30 Military Installations and VA Centers Have Been Trained in CAMS
For many years, CAMS has been successfully trained to providers who work in military treatment facilities (MTF’s) across service branches. The increase in suicidal ideation and behaviors in military personnel in the last ten years created a need for an effective intervention that could be adapted for use with this patient population. The flexible format and structured approach to assessment and treatment of suicidal risk inherent in CAMS has proven to be a good fit for both providers and patients in military behavioral health care settings.
Clinical trial research has shown CAMS to be highly effective in eliminating suicidal ideation among US Air Force personnel (Jobes et al., 2005) and US Army Soldiers (Jobes, Comtois, Gutierrez, Brenner et al 2017). There is evidence that CAMS reduces emergency department visits and overall symptom distress while increasing resiliency in certain sub-groups of service members (Huh et al., 2018). CAMS has been trained to MTF providers in over 30 military installations across the United States.
Similarly, CAMS has been successfully trained and used within Veterans Affairs treatment settings for many years with suicidal veterans. Indeed, the VA Center of Excellence engaged Dr. Jobes to train across 8 VA Medical Centers that make up “VISN-7” (a network of hospitals in Georgia, South Carolina, and Alabama). Beyond this major training effort, similar CAMS training has been conducted in over 20 other VA Medical Centers and outpatient settings across the United States over the past 15 years.
For more information about options for training in CAMS for military behavioral health care providers or VA mental health care providers, please contact us.