Welcome Home - A Podcast for Veterans, About Veterans, By Veterans

Who Cares For The Caregivers When The Uniform Comes Off

• Larry Zilliox • Season 3 • Episode 131

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The moment a service member transitions, the family’s support web can evaporate. We sat down with Hannah O’Brien, Program Director of the Veteran Spouse Network (VSN) at the University of Texas, to map out a better way forward: peer-led groups, practical suicide prevention tools, and data that actually reflects what spouses and caregivers need right now. If you’ve ever wondered how to rebuild the tribe after the military, this conversation brings the blueprint.

Hannah traces VSN’s roots from Texas-based research to a national network that runs mostly virtual, peer-facilitated groups. These are structured, welcoming spaces for spouses and caregivers navigating PTS at home, identity shifts after service, and the everyday frictions of life post-uniform. We dig into the evidence behind the model—measurable gains in quality of life, reduced anxiety and depression, and stronger social support—and how VSN refines its curriculum using ongoing evaluation and feedback from leaders in the field.

We also look at suicide prevention for families. Many veterans aren’t in treatment, which means loved ones often see the first red flags. VSN equips households with free monthly trainings like Mental Health First Aid, guidance on lethal means safety, and step-by-step safety planning. It’s clear, actionable, and built for non-clinicians—think CPR for mental health—focused on buying time and staying safe while help is secured. Plus, Hannah shares insights from the new Military and Veteran Spouse Wellness Survey, a national snapshot across eight domains that helps VSOs, funders, and communities design services families actually use.

You’ll leave with links to VSN’s podcast, a robust resource hub, and ways to get involved—from joining a group to sharing trainings with a caregiver you love. If this conversation resonates, subscribe, share it with your network, and leave a quick review. Your support helps more families find the community, tools, and hope they deserve.

Larry Zilliox:

Good morning. I'm your host, Larry Zilliox, Director of Culinary Services here at the Warrior Retreat at Bull Run. This week our guest is Hannah O'Brien. She's the program director of the Veteran Spouse Network, which is part of the Institute for Military and Veteran Family Wellness at the University of Austin, Texas, in Austin. Sorry. Um Hannah welcome to the podcast.

Hannah O'Brien:

Thanks so much for having me.

Larry Zilliox:

So I ran across the uh institute. Uh you guys were listed as a resource on a number of things that I was looking at, and I hadn't heard about them. Um, I think most people, most of my listeners probably have heard about the uh the institute at uh University of uh Syracuse, up in Syracuse. Um, but uh how long have you guys been around?

Hannah O'Brien:

Yeah, so we've been around informally and formally. My uh our institute director, Dr. Lisa Bora, has been at UT doing work in this space for about the last decade. She's been at the School of Social Work doing, you know, research and projects related to the military and veteran family for that long, but we didn't really formalize as uh our own institute um until a few years after that, as we really built more projects and realized, you know what, this is like a untapped area of research. Um, and you know, we could be a player in this space if we really kind of built our own thing. So we did.

Larry Zilliox:

Yeah. How do you like working where you went to school and living in Austin?

Hannah O'Brien:

Well, I am actually uh born and raised in Austin, Texas, and my parents met at the university in Texas. So I um, you know, I bleed burnt orange. So I I love it. I knew at some point I wanted to go to school here, and I literally started um working this job about a week before I graduated from their social work program.

Larry Zilliox:

So and uh I believe your husband is a uh Marine veteran, is that correct? He is, he is. Now, were you uh a military spouse? Uh, were you married to him while he was on active duty?

Hannah O'Brien:

I was not. Um, he got out in 2010 and we met in 2015. So I'm what we refer to often as post-service veteran spouse, and there are actually a lot of us out here.

Larry Zilliox:

Yeah. Right away, I want to direct our listeners to the webpage. It's pretty easy. It's veteranspousnetwork.org. And take a look at all the different programs. And one of the things that jumps out at me is your work with peer-to-peer support as well as your uh suicide prevention program. Um, can you talk a little bit about how those came to be and what each of those is?

Hannah O'Brien:

Yes, absolutely. So I would certainly say that like peer support is our bread and butter. That's really what where we started, what we do the most of, what I'd say we're we're truly experts in, both from the program side and the research side. Um, and that really came about uh from Dr. Bora. She was doing, in addition to doing her own work, um, or you know, her own studies that she was interested in 15 years ago or so, she was also doing consultant work for other orgs. And one of those organizations happened to be uh here in Texas, we have the uh Texas Veterans Commission and they run a huge program called the Military Veteran Peer Network, uh, which does peer support for veterans, families as well, but mostly focused on the veteran. And they brought her in to, you know, conduct focus groups and things like that with the veterans in their program to see how they were liking the program, what could be uh improved. And she goes across the state, and sure enough, tons and tons of spouses were showing up to these focus groups despite not being a audience of services. And she talked to them. She's a veteran spouse herself as well. They just said, you know what? This is such a transported program. This like whole peer support model is so supportive of our veterans. Where is this for us? We need this too. From there, that's really where she kind of shifted some of her focus more into looking at, you know, peer support for the veteran spouse community. And that's about the time that I came on and joined her in 2017. And we built, you know, a program, a curriculum-based program that we still run today called our veteran spouse resiliency group program. And that really just got us started. And we just expanded and just really being able to see both anecdotally, just hearing participant feedback, but also from the research that we're conducting, how big of an impact peer support really makes in the lives of most people, period, no matter what you're going through, but certainly this spouse community who so used to like relying on peers in their community for support. And then also going through something really unique that a huge proportion of the civilian community just doesn't understand and can't relate to. Um, so that's really where we like found our being. I don't know if you have any more questions about that, but I can also talk about uh suicide prevention, which is newer for us.

Larry Zilliox:

Yeah, let's talk a little bit about the peer support network. Is it it's virtual?

Hannah O'Brien:

Largely. Um, when we started really running groups back in like 2018, um, we were doing fully in-person, just in the state of Texas. And we were really lucky, I guess you'd say, that actually prior to the pandemic, we started doing virtual groups across the state of Texas because, you know, no matter what we do, Texas is huge. We can't possibly have an in-person group in every community. So we started doing virtual groups in addition to in-person groups in about 2019, which really uh made things a lot easier for us to pivot um and adjust in the pandemic. And then in the pan, we had constantly getting people from all over the country being like, hey, where's the you know, South Carolina chapter of the Veterans Spouse Network? They're like, oh, you know, we're not a chapter, we're just us. And so when the pandemic hit, uh, we we got our money from the state of Texas and we just said, Hey, you know, would y'all be at all willing to allow us to open our groups nationally with your funding? And they were just so generous and they said yes. And so, really, since the pandemic, we've been a national organization. And so I would say about 98% of our groups are virtual. And then depending on where we have, you know, peer leaders across the country, we do some in-person groups as well.

Larry Zilliox:

Yeah, yeah. Well, I understand how popular the program could be because for military spouses of active duty, they're used to that support network that was just landed on them when they arrived at an installation. So uh there's always uh spouse clubs and and like the army spouses network, or you know, they they have them on the installation. And when these soldiers show up and they have a brand new bride who doesn't know anything about the military, the officers' wives club and the network that's already there is there to support them, to walk them through what they need to know. And so, and then they they're part of that, and then mentor other new arrival wives and and spouses. And um, it it's really it's really great because I see it as a direct extension of that. And and you know, that's one of the biggest problems that our veterans have is that when they leave the military, that they're leaving that tribe behind. And the same goes for spouses, you know, they they're used to that support network from base to base they would join and be part of it, and and that goes away as well. So this is an amazing program that you have. It's really uh uh I hope you're generating um valuable data about how important it is. Do you do you guys do research based around the program?

Hannah O'Brien:

We do. Um that that is the beauty of you know, my our our director, who's our director of our institute, and then the veteran spouse network, uh although it's part of the institute, we almost kind of run it like a separate national organization. And she's our our research director. So she's a social worker, uh research researcher by trade. So this is like her, this is always what she wanted to do. She jokes sometimes like, how did I get to the point? You know, before she kind of turned uh the reins over to me for Veterans Spouse Network, she's like, How did I get to the point where I'm running an organization? Like, I'm a researcher. Um, but because of that, you know, having an evidence base and collecting data and evaluating our programs is incredibly important to us because we know how much that one just makes sure that you're creating program that actually addresses the needs and does what you're hoping it does, right? If we don't conduct um an evaluation, we don't know that it's actually helping anyone. So for especially for our curriculum-based program, which started out as 12 weeks, now is six weeks, um, we've since 2018 been conducting pretty rigorous evaluations on that. So we look at um participants' uh quality of life, um, mental health symptoms like anxiety and depression, um, as well as uh their self-care practices and their kind of sense of social support, really like thinking that those are the things we think this group has the ability to positively impact. And yay, our research has shown that it does positively impact in all of those areas. So it's doing what we hope it's doing. And then, you know, we constantly have those conversations of like, are things changing? We also get a lot of participant feedback in our evaluation, as well as from our peer leaders who are actually, you know, on the grounds, the ones running these groups. And we make changes as we need to to make sure that it's still addressing the things that our participants need it to, um, and that we can get those those positive outcomes that we're hoping to.

Larry Zilliox:

So does this data or this information, is it part of the the military and veteran spouse wellness survey that the institute does?

Hannah O'Brien:

No, so that's separate um and that's new. Um, one of the things that we've always known and has been hard is there's just so little data about military and veteran spouses, more so on active duty spouses, but still a lot of gap there. Almost none about veteran spouses whatsoever. And so, you know, us doing our programming data and stuff like that was a way to address that, at least from the side of what we were doing with our programs. But we had wanted to do more. And so the wellness survey, we our our first annual was last uh fall. We ran it, and that's something we just plan to keep doing to really be able to have a bigger, wider picture of what is going on in the lives of military and veteran spouses um in kind of what we identified as like eight domains of wellness, because wellness is really our focus and being able to just better understand where they're at and then track that over time, you know, as we the world is changing. Um, and so are they. So we want to know and we want to contribute to greater understanding even outside of us, right? Being able to disseminate this back out to the community so that other organizations can understand um the population and better address their needs.

Larry Zilliox:

Well, that's key right there, because uh uh readers, you can find and download the uh results of the survey on the uh institute's webpage. And I urge everybody uh to download it and take a look at it, especially if you are part of a veteran service organization out there, and there's about 55,000 of them. And unfortunately, there are a number of them that uh kind of work the problem backwards and say, hey, this is what we do, let's give it to veterans and spouses and families, where they don't really understand what veterans, spouses, and families need. And so a lot of effort and a lot of work goes into providing sometimes services and products that uh families don't need. As it can be geographic issues, it can be just just things that that they just don't need. And uh this kind of survey is extremely valuable, very similar to the survey that Blue Star Families does, which is really valuable to the VSO community. So that's an awesome service that you all provide. Tell me a little bit about the anti-suicide program, because everywhere you look, there's a lot of programs that are out there, and I'm always interested in ones that work.

Hannah O'Brien:

Yes. So that's been a newer focus area of ours and one that we've been really excited to be involved in. We'd always done some suicide prevention work, but mostly focused on like equipping our peer leaders with the skills they need to like identify if someone's in crisis, right? So we've been doing some training just of our leaders. And when um, so we're we're grantees of the Face the Fight Collaborative, um, which is out of the um USAA's foundation, and they have this, you know, almost 300-member coalition all with the aim to end veteran suicide. And so we started uh we're in our third year of funding with them, just started this month, actually. And that it's all about suicide prevention. And what we really kind of our niche in this is equipping the family with the tools, the training, the support they need. Because if you think about it, we know, right, that huge percentage of veterans are not getting care. They're not seeing the doctor, they're not seeing the person at the BA, they're not seeing a community clinician or anybody like that. They're reluctant to do that for whatever reason. They are at home with their family and their family are so poised and positioned to be able to notice those early warning signs that something may be happening. But if they don't know what those early warning signs are and they don't know what to do when they see them, then what are they gonna do? How could they possibly help? So we have really in the last two years, like created a very robust um suicide prevention training program aimed at supporting families. So we have monthly free training available and it's really available to anyone. So you don't have to be a family member. You could be a veteran, a service member yourself, you could be um a, you know, a civilian supporter, um, someone who just cares about this community. Maybe you have a lot of veterans in your life that you wanna, you know, look out for. Maybe you're a provider, a community provider, and you just want more training. And so we do mental health first aid training, which is uh one of our favorites. We've been doing it with our leaders forever because it's really geared towards like the layperson's understanding of like identifying mental health crisis symptoms and giving them an actionable strategy to intervene in an appropriate way, right? We're not training anybody to be a clinician. That's that's not responsible.

Speaker 1:

Right.

Hannah O'Brien:

Um, but what can I do to keep someone safe? Just like if I were to take a medical first aid, right? I'm not, you know, doing open heart surgery, I'm doing CPR, I'm, you know, keeping someone from bleeding out. Same concept. Uh so we've been doing a lot of that, as well as some um how to talk about safe storage of lethal means um with your loved one and how to create safety plans. So, how do you keep your family safe so that if a crisis is to arrive, you already know exactly what to look for and exactly what to do. And hopefully you can prevent it from happening.

Larry Zilliox:

And these are online, they're virtual. Anybody can sign up?

Hannah O'Brien:

Yes, and free. Yes, and they these are trainings that other places you might have to pay for, so completely free.

Larry Zilliox:

Well, yeah. So listeners, again, the veteranswork.org. You want to go there and take a look if you click on say the the column conversations, which is uh an excellent uh program about uh access to lethal means, and we know statistically that the majority of veterans that take their life do so with a firearm. Um so we want to make sure that uh the family is aware of uh how it should properly be stored and to keep it it's always the goal is to put a pause in the process. And so properly storing firearms and um ammunition is key to putting that pause in the process if at all possible. Wow. So the idea that these you can they're just sign up and virtually take this class, and it's not only for veterans, um, you might have a first responder in your family. And we see uh moral injury as a serious issue with first responders, both law enforcement, fire department, um uh frontline health care workers in the ERs. And uh uh so think about anybody who's in a position that may become overwhelmed with what they see on their job. And uh you might be seeing them experience issues that might be the result of moral injury or or just PTS in general. Take these classes, take them, they're free. Go there, send a link to other relatives, other friends that you know, get as many people as possible to spread the word about it and take these classes because they're not long, they're not hard to understand, it's not uh it's not loaded with a bunch of medical jargon, it's made for lay people, and believe me, you're not gonna have any trouble uh understanding what this program is all about. So please, uh listeners, the veterans spousnetwork.org, you want to check it out. Hannah, where do you see the Veterans Spouse Network in say five years?

Hannah O'Brien:

I love this question. Um, we have grown so much in the last two years. Um, when we started, it was just myself and Dr. Bora. Um, like added a team member here and there. Uh in the last year, our team has doubled. Oh, um, we now have about 10 staff members, um, which when you think of huge big national organizations still seems small, but for us, it's it's been really exciting to see what we've been able to do. Like, you know, kind of when you're when you're two people, you're really kind of in survival mode. Like you're just like cranking it out, all right. We're here for the participants, we're here for our leaders, do it, doing what needs to be done. And I feel like, especially just in the last year, we've really got into the point where we can start, you know, doing those big dreams, looking five years out and really feeling equipped to to figure out what it means. Where do we want to go? Um, and that's exciting. And so we've been doing a lot of this national growth, a lot of national partnership, because it is kind of weird being based out of the University of Texas and having been a Texas only organization for the first several years of our existence. So a lot of people, you know, still don't know we're out there. They still don't know that we're not just a Texas organization. And so we've been doing a lot of national partnerships and making sure we're getting out in the national community to really make sure people know like we're here for you. How can we um, you know, better serve your community wherever you may be? Um, and so a lot of like strategic partnership work is what we've been doing, and it's been really exciting. Um, you know, I always joke it's my favorite and least favorite thing to hear when we meet someone out in the community and they're like, oh my gosh, I I didn't know you existed and I really wish I had known like two years ago. Um, because you're like, oh, that probably means like, you know, maybe some bad things were happening, but but I'm so glad you're here, right? I'm so glad we're we're connecting now and you're aware of us now. So a lot of of targeted national expansion work is our plan over the next several years so that we don't have that, you know, we don't have people saying, I didn't know you exist and I really needed you five years ago. So that's really what we're doing, and just you know, continuing our our good programs. We have a lot of programs. I like to think we have a little something for everyone. And so just continuing to flush out and kind of adapt with the changing needs of our community. As they need us to change, we will change.

Larry Zilliox:

So let's talk a minute about funding. Where does the funding come from?

Hannah O'Brien:

Anywhere and everywhere. No, you know. Um wherever we can get it now. Yeah. Yeah. So I mentioned, you know, this the face the fight grant that we're now in our third year of. That's that has been transformative for us to be able to grow and really have that focus on on national growth. And and so that's been great. Prior to that, really, our primary funder, who they are still one of our primary funders, is the state of Texas. They have funded us through an amazing program called the Texas Veteran Family Alliance Grant Program since 2018. Um, and and that's we've really loved that and enjoyed that because, you know, I'll I'll be honest, Larry, like focus on the family is not as few and far between. So there is a lot, um, a lot of focus on veterans as they have certainly earned. But a lot of times when we're, you know, approaching funders or looking for grants, they're saying, Well, what do you mean you don't serve the veteran? You know, they're not serving that directly, or maybe they'll support our suicide prevention program because we keep we will serve the veteran through that. And so we do a lot of like trying to educate and advocate around, you know, spouses served too, and spouses are affected by their partner's service. Even, you know, here I am today. I did not serve alongside my my spouse, but he's a Marine Corps veteran with PTSD. Like, I am affected by his service, you know. Um, I deserve support, and also I want to be equipped to support him. And so we have to do a lot of that kind of education, which honestly I'd love to do. That's I I hate that we have to do it, but I love to do it because being able to see people's kind of eyes light up and the you know, the things working behind the brain of like, oh, of course, it clicks. Yes.

Larry Zilliox:

Yeah, yeah.

Hannah O'Brien:

We do need to support them.

Larry Zilliox:

Well, you know, and uh I recently did an episode with um uh one of the the C CEO or COO or uh one of the big cheeses over at uh the Elizabeth Dole Foundation. And they do a lot of work, of course, with uh spouses and and and children too. And i it it is surprising that so many people don't uh see the impact uh one or two levels removed in the family. So they just think, oh, the the veteran has a problem, or you know, he has uh PTS or he's got a prosthetic and and they don't they don't understand the toll that that uh takes on the the caregiver and then the children who become caregivers and their life is completely uh upended as well. And so um the you're right, there's there's so much uh focus on the veteran, but very limited focus on the family as a whole or on the uh on the the caregiver, the spouse. So this is just uh an awesome program that you have. Um I also want to mention that you have a podcast, that you are a podcaster. Um I am, I am. Yeah, well, it looked like you're doing an episode once a month.

Speaker 1:

Yes.

Larry Zilliox:

Oh, okay. That is uh is it available on all the major podcast platforms?

Hannah O'Brien:

It it is, it is. Anywhere you can find a podcast, you should be able to find ours.

Larry Zilliox:

Okay. Well, listeners, it's the Veterans Spouse Network podcast. So you just look it up on your Spotify or it's really easy. Everything is the veteranspouse network.org or podcast, or it's easy to find uh Hannah and her amazing group of uh folks that are doing such fantastic work. So please listen to the podcast, go to the webpage, and my regular niss listeners know what I'm gonna say now. It's like any other veteran service organization. When you get to the webpage, you're gonna look up in the right-hand corner, you're gonna see that red donate button. So bang on that button, give what you can, five dollars, five thousand dollars. They need all the money they can get. These programs are not cheap. Uh, you have to pay staff, and hopefully they are paying staff a reasonable uh amount of money, not a nonprofit kind of money, but money that they deserve for their um knowledge and skills, uh and the kind of money that they would make in the community if they uh were out uh out at another organization or another company or something like that. So please donate, give what you can, look at all the resources. So there's a really robust resource page there that'll take you to all sorts of organizations that uh might be able to give you uh other assistance that they can't. But check it out, take that URL and send it to family and friends and people that you know that need to um connect with the resources that are available, all the virtual programs that are available. We want to make sure that we're getting the word out as as much as we can. So please spread the word, you know, link to it, put it on your social media. That is really, really gonna help a lot too. Anna, I can't thank you enough for joining us today. I really appreciate it.

Hannah O'Brien:

Oh, we appreciate it too. And thank you for you know, all the directions to all the amazing different resources, donations, um, our programs. Yeah, just connect, whatever that means to you. You know, we want to hear from you, wanting we want to see you, want to serve you.

Larry Zilliox:

Great. Well, thanks a lot. And listeners, we'll have another episode next Monday morning at 5 a.m. If you have any questions or suggestions, you can reach us at podcast at willing warriors.org. You can reach us on find us on all the major podcast platforms. We're also on YouTube and Wreaths Across America Radio. So until then, thanks for listening.

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