Real Warriors Campaign
Department of Defense campaign launched May 2009 by the Defense Centers of Excellence for Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury to reduce the stigma of seeking psychological health care, featuring service members who sought help and continued their careers. Hosted on a .net site partly because troops feared help-seeking would harm their careers.
- Years
- 2009
- Country
- United States
- Topic
- Mental health
- Asks people to
- Seek help
- Strategy
- Testimonial
- Channel
- EventsPrintSocial (organic)Social (paid)Website
- Audience
- AdultsActive-duty, Guard and Reserve service members, veterans and families.
Evidence
ProcessUnknown
RAND assessed content, design and dissemination against health communication best practices (TR1176). A later RAND cross-agency review found 62% of 265 content items tailored to active-duty or Guard/Reserve members; not a full outcome evaluation.
Sponsor (who paid)
- U.S. Department of Defense, Defense Centers of Excellence for Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury Federal government, funder and creator
Credits (who made it)
- RAND Corporation Research evaluation, 2011-2012 source
Executions (individual ads)
- Real Warriors ad, Oct 1, 2019 2019 · social-paid · meta-ad-library · 300K - 350K impressions
- Real Warriors ad, Feb 5, 2020 2020 · social-paid · meta-ad-library · 250K - 300K impressions
- Real Warriors ad, Apr 15, 2020 2020 · social-paid · meta-ad-library · 200K - 250K impressions · spend $500 - $599
- Real Warriors ad, Oct 23, 2020 2020 · social-paid · meta-ad-library · 150K - 175K impressions · spend $800 - $899
Related campaigns
- Make the Connection 2011–now
Sources
- Assessment of the Content, Design, and Dissemination of the Real Warriors Campaign (RAND TR1176) evaluation · 2012
- 'Real Warriors' takes aim at mental health stigma (Army News Service) news · 2009
- Defense launches campaign and Web site to destigmatize traumatic stress (Nextgov, May 2009) news · 2009
- Cross-agency evaluation of DoD, VA and HHS mental health public awareness campaigns evaluation
Research notes
Credits checked 2026-10-22 against fetched pages: RAND Corporation (RAND TR-1176, 2012, independent assessment of the campaign). Taxonomy gap: no 'military/veterans' audience value. Status after DCoE reorganization (2019-) unclear; confirm end year. Reuse terms checked 2026-10-23 by an AI research pass for #47; not yet reviewed by a person.
Record cases/dod-real-warriors.json, updated 2026-10-23· Link to this campaign