The impact of a counseling service program on the psychosocial morbidity of Australian Vietnam veterans

The Vietnam Veterans Counselling Service (VVCS) is a national counseling program for Australian Vietnam Veterans. The effectiveness of this service was evaluated by comparing the symptom levels of 146 VVCS clients with 546 ''matched'' nonclient controls. Multivariate linear regression techniques were used to control for differences between the two veteran groups prior to estimating the contribution of VVCS exposure to current symptom levels. Health outcomes assessed ranged from depression and post-traumatic stress disorder to alcohol dependence and problems in dyadic adjustment. The positive influence of service-based counseling was most evident in the areas of alcohol dependence and dyadic adjustment. These findings are consistent with the view that the major benefit of treatment programs such as the VVCS is that they facilitate veteran coping responses, thereby enabling them to ''live well'' with their symptomatology.