Military family mental health issues

Military family mental health issues

Abstract

Military family mental health issues are the problems that many military families are facing from the psychological health conditions of their members who are in service or its members generally. The problems arise from several factors such as deployment stress from pre-deployment, away from home period, and post-deployment, and mass violence. Other issues dealt with include grief and bereavement, coping with war-related, and readjusting to normal. They, in turn, cause several mental diseases and effects on the victims and their families. Some of the disorders are addiction, suicide, depression, anxiety, and substance abuse. The problems have a way to resolve them before they become severe. It can be through changing the perception about mental health, getting informed, screened and seeking help.

Military family mental health issues

Military family mental health issues are the psychological impacts that families whose members are working in the military undergo. It results in several consequences from the various mental health issues that deployment of service members causes to their families and the service personnel themselves. Such effects include relationship problems, overwhelming tasks, physical and psychological impairment, death of the service personnel, violence to intimate partners and negligence of responsibilities to children. The military strives to solve the issue by providing sufficient support to the psychological health of its members. The paper will discuss the causes, the mental health issues and how to resolve the problems.

Causes

Pre-deployment

Before any deployment, service members are told to prepare their families as they leave for work away from home for some time. Thus, families need to make preparations emotionally, legally, logistically, and possibilities for injuries or death of their member. Many of the families find it difficult and stressful to cope with the moment. Some end up being depressed and extremely fearful of the security of their loved one. Small children may fail to understand why their parent is going away, thus confusing. Also, the remaining spouse becomes worried for their incoming loneliness, parenting issues and probably limited communication with their partner.

The effect is also felt by the service members who are going for a deployment. Research shows that the military personnel, who anticipate the deployment, have a hard time during the period before the separation. Moreover, those who have been in a marriage for less than three years find it hard to completely separate with their families (Lester et al., 2010)

During the deployment period

In this time, the service members are already deployed and are staying far away from their families. A study done on the medical reports of more than 250,000 military wives found that the spouses whose partners had gone away for deployment significantly suffered sleep disorders, adjustment problems, anxiety, stress and depression. Moreover, they sought psychological health services at higher rates compared to the spouses whose partners were not deployed. Length of deployment also increased the rate of seeking mental health care. Statistics show that military wives who sought psychiatric care after their husbands were deployed between 1 and 11 months was 19% more than those undeployed and 27%more for those whose husbands were deployed for more than 11 months (Mansfield et al., 2010)

Post-deployment

It is the period after deployment when the service members have returned home. The military personnel and the family have to readjust to fit in the changes. Some of the new changes include parental duties, house chores and management of finances. Couples who keep live communication and openness between them when their spouses are in deployment are less likely to have difficulties in readjusting than those who were not communicating.

Mass violence

It is an intentional act that is conducted in a criminal way to cause psychological, physical and emotional injury to many people. In this case, mass violence that can occur to military personnel such as the bombing of their hideouts, enemy attacks and killings, hijacking of military transportations or military family members, the mass shooting of soldiers during wars and bioterrorism attacks. Since it is an unexpected occurrence, victims tend to be distressed. Others have anxiety overwhelmingly, depression symptoms and poor sleeping habits (MacDermid, 2010)

Effects

Disruptions to family life

It refers to the events which cause disruptions to the structure of families. The activities include the death of parents, divorce, and deployment of military personnel and poor mental health of a member of a military family. The disruptions affect spouses and children. For instance, children can develop negative personality traits, lack of proper development in the personality, high prevalence to adulthood depression, hardships academically, and lack of mobility socially.  Partners may feel overburdened by the responsibilities of taking care of the family alone while the service member is at work, loneliness, and anxiety and poor sleeping habits. Family members may also be prone to drug abuse and delinquency to avoid dealing with some pain and trauma.

The family member who is in the service may also feel disrupted from enjoying being with their family. They may feel inadequate and anxious to leave all the responsibilities to one spouse, they feel bad to leave their children, some may miss their growing stages or birth of their babies, they miss major family events like thanksgivings. They may even lose a loved one but may not be able to attend their burial.

Marital conflicts

They are differences in opinions on marriage relationships. In military families, poor mental health issues may result in marital conflicts.  They can arise from poor communication, unfaithfulness, anger, pride, bitterness, and hurt. The partners can decide to resolve their issues and save their marriage or to remain ignorant and watch it fall into pieces. Some essential steps the couples can take to solve their conflicts include giving up their pride, forgiving hurt, setting aside bitterness, apologizing for their mistakes and practising constant communication and openness (Sayers,2011).

Family violence

It refers to violence in a domestic setting done against a child or a spouse of the family. It is usually against an intimate partner. Ill mental health issues in a military family may lead to domestic violence. For example, trauma may cause one to become violent to the other spouse. Other forms of domestic violence against a partner may include marital rape, insults, physical abuse, genital mutilation, disfigurement and even death.

Moreover, the service member can become violent to the children and cause them physical harm like beating. Other forms are religious abuse, economic suffocation, emotional abuse and neglect. In many cases, because the other spouse, mostly the mother, is fragile and weak, she fails to defend the children from the abusive husband (Sheppard, Malatras and Israel, 2010)

Child maltreatment

It refers to any kind of abuse done to a child.  Children in military families can undergo maltreatment from the ill mental health of their parents who are in service or one of them. They can suffer physical abuse where the patent may harm them physically from anger or violence. They can also undergo emotional abuse where they lack emotional support from their caregiver. Emotional harm can affect the child’s stability in their social, mental and spiritual lives. The actions that the child receives can also reduce their self-esteem, make them fearful, feel rejected, belittled and abandoned. Moreover, the child can undergo neglect where they are unable to access proper health care, education, emotional development, safe living conditions, shelter and nutrition. Sexual (Paley, Lester and Mogil, 2013)

Self-directed violence

Individuals who are raised in military families that experience violence have a high prevalence to pass the force down to their own families. It may be intentional such that they seek to revenge the pain they felt or unintentional where they do not know their violent past haunts them. As a result, some end up being completely brutal to other people too, disregarding the respect to their spouses and children and full of past anger that they wish to unleash (Blosnich et al., 2014).

Mental health issues

Post-traumatic stress disorder

It is a disease that develops after witnessing or personal experience of a scenario that poses a death threat to military personnel or severe injury. Its symptoms portray in four clusters. The first one is an intrusion, where the individual responds to reminders of the trauma, has nightmares and flashbacks. Another group is the avoidance of traumatic thoughts, feelings and reminders.  The next is alterations in moods and cognition such as self-blame, negative beliefs and destructive emotions.  The last one is reactivity and arousal causing disturbances while sleeping, difficulties in concentration, hypervigilance, startling responses and high irritability (Dekel and Monson, 2010)

Military sexual trauma

It is severe harassment or assault done to a military person sexually while in service.  They undergo such maltreatment from their colleagues or the opponent warring party. Many of them find it difficult to confide to it others about their experience; thus, it affects their mental health. They become depressed, anxious, and some begin abusing drugs. Their expertise affects their families in that they find it hard to be intimate with their spouses. Others become very violent and hurt their families.

Depression

It is a mood disorder that affects a person’s normal behaviour. The individual loses pleasure in doing most things and may become easily irritated. Its symptoms include weight gain, or it’s loss unintentionally, hypersonic and fatigued nearly all the time and each day. Additional others include insomnia, agitation, observable retardation, suicidal thoughts, increased levels of indecisiveness and loss of concentration. It may cause an individual to abuse illicit and prescription drugs and alcohol. The family and the service member are prone to depression. But it majorly affects the military personnel.

Adjustment disorders

Before deployment, during and after deployment, most of the military families undergo adjustment disorders. It is not easy when their family member leaves them to go to another place while the members are only left with the hope of seeing them alive when they return. The other spouse is left with the duty to take of the family alone. They have to learn to manage everything on their own for a given period. The children are left hoping for their parent’s return. Some may fail to understand why their parents had to go to them and learn to cope without them.

Sleep disorders

It is an irregular sleeping disorder caused by the inability to sleep well regularly. Mental health issues of military families can cause some individual to be worrisome because of the family members who are working far away from home. It can result in stress and anxiety. Some of its symptoms include difficulty in sleeping, excessive fatigue during day time, worry, easily irritable, depression, strong urge to nap during the day and loss of concentration.

Anxiety

It is an intense and debilitating feeling one gas about an occurrence. It is unpleasant and can occur nearly all the time. In military families, they may experience anxiety from various things. They include panic disorders from receiving sudden negative news about their family member, phobia from being left alone, especially during deployment and social anxiety disorder from events like military sexual assault and harassments. Others can develop from separation anxiety when a partner is going for a mission and post-traumatic disorders. Some of its symptoms include rapid breathing, increased heart rate, and difficulties in sleep, poor concentration and restlessness.

Traumatic brain injury

It is a disease that occurs at the same time with depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. Many deployed military members have been diagnosed with the disease. Reduced consciousness levels indicate it, memory loss before or after injury, the poor mental state during injury, intracranial lesion, and neurological deficits. It can also be mild, moderate or severe. It is caused by depression, disorder for abuse of substances, suicide and post-traumatic stress disorder (Nash and Litz, 2013)

Acute stress reaction

It is a reaction which occurs when stressful events cause specific symptoms to develop quickly but do not last for long. Its occurrence is after an unexpected crisis in lifelike traumatic events, severe accidents and sudden bereavement, which can result in military sexual assault or domestic violence.  It can occur to both the military personnel and the family members. To the staff, accidents and traumatic events can affect their relationship with their families, themselves and other people. Family members may be shocked when they receive news of the sudden demise of their loved one while at work.

Effects on the family members

Spouse

Spouses who are affected by the poor mental health of their partners may have a reduced quality of life, impaired physical health, hardships at work and reduced productivity. It can also affect their intimate relationships by causing shame, resentment and guilt. Others may have troubles sharing intimacy, while others may fear the ability to be entirely dependent on the other spouse.

Children

Kids who have parents suffering from poor mental health lack security, proper parenting, experience parental distress and exposure to difficulties in marriage. As a result, they can have poor performance academically, lack of emotional control, isolation from stigma and shame, poor socialization skills, increased risks of drug abuse and assuming of adult responsibilities.

Resolving issues

Changing the way people think about mental health

There is so much stigmatization associated with mental health issues in society. Many people do not want to be known that they have a particular psychological problem. As a result, many people end up staying without treatment for their problem, causing long-term effects of the disease, which could have otherwise been treated shortly through therapy. It is, therefore, essential for people to become positive about dealing with their psychological conditions.

Getting informed

People need to know the signs and symptoms of mental health issues to identify and seek help while it is still early. Friends and other families can help one identify their problem as well as offer them support during the period when they start seeking professional help.

Getting screened

Screening is the best way to identify underlying health conditions and get early treatment. The process is short, and through it, one can e checked for symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, depression and mood disorders. It also increases the chances of one getting proper medical treatment and cost-effective early intervention.

Getting help

It is the most significant decision for any individual to take in their step for mental health recovery. The clients need to know of the types of treatments at the stage like therapy, complementary and alternative medicine, peer support, standardized medication, self-care and community-based services. A person also needs to be able to manage their expectations about the treatment, for instance, is costly and doubts from some people.

Prevention programs

They are programs whose aim is to reduce the adverse effects that arise of the mental health issues of military families, especially those whose family members have been deployed. They also purpose to build resilience and reduce stress during the wartime deployment period. Majority of the people who need the prevention programs are those who have been deeply affected psychologically like the family members who have lost their loved ones, the maimed service members, those with severe injuries and those with traumatic memories (Lester et al., 2012)

Family attachment networks

They provide support to military families to cope with tough times because they live with anxiety, fear, some of them are depressed, lonely, and unsure but only hope that their family members go back home safely and alive. As such, they need a family attachment network to give them support and motivation to wait for their member’s return (Riggs and Riggs, 2011)

Star behavioural Health

It is an outreach program offered by the military families’ research institute to provide training to health providers so that they can understand the behaviour of service members. The personnel are connected to help the service personnel and their families.  The organization operates in California, South Carolina, Ohio, Indiana, Newyork, Michigan, Utah, Georgia and Oregon states. They work to help the families deal with anxiety, PTSD, sleep disorder and marital and relationship issues.

In conclusion, military family mental health issues are psychological problems which a service member and their family suffer.  The psychological health problems are caused by some factors like deployment and mass violence. The causes are leading to several mental disorders and effects. Some of the diseases include traumatic brain injury, depression, post-traumatic disorder, anxiety, sleep disorders and military sexual disorder. Spouse and the children are affected by the problems. Some of them are family violence, marital conflicts, and disruptions of family life, self-directed violence and child maltreatment. To resolve the issues, one has to change their thinking about mental health, get informed of the risks and factors, get screened and seek help. There are institutions to help families cope with issues like star behavioural health and family attachment networks.

References

Blosnich, J. R., Dichter, M. E., Cerulli, C., Batten, S. V., &Bossarte, R. M. (2014). Disparities in adverse childhood experiences among individuals with a history of military service. JAMA Psychiatry, 71(9), 1041-1048. https://doi.org.10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2014.724

Dekel, R., & Monson, C. M. (2010). Military-related post-traumatic stress disorder and family relations: Current knowledge and future directions. Aggression and Violent Behavior, 15(4), 303-309. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.avb.2010.03.001

Lester, P., Peterson, K., Reeves, J., Knauss, L., Glover, D., Mogil, C., &Beardslee, W. (2010). The long war and parental combat deployment: Effects on military children and at-home spouses. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 49(4), 310-320.https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2875082/

Lester, P., Saltzman, W. R., Woodward, K., Glover, D., Leskin, G. A., Bursch, B., … &Beardslee, W. (2012). Evaluation of a family-centred prevention intervention for military children and families facing wartime deployments. American Journal of Public Health, 102(S1), S48-S54.https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/pdfplus/10.2105/AJPH.2010.300088

MacDermid Wadsworth, S. M. (2010). Family risk and resilience in the context of war and terrorism. Journal of Marriage and Family, 72(3), 537-556. https://doi.org.10.1111/j.1741-3737.2010.00717.x

Mansfield, A. J., Kaufman, J. S., Engel, C. C., Gaynes, B. N. (2011). Deployment and mental health diagnoses among children of US Army personnel. Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine. [PubMed]

Nash, W. P., &Litz, B. T. (2013). Moral injury: A mechanism for war-related psychological trauma in military family members. Clinical child and family psychology review, 16(4), 365-375. https://doi.org.10.1007/s10567-013-0146-y

Paley, B., Lester, P., & Mogil, C. (2013). Family systems and ecological perspectives on the impact of deployment on military families. Clinical child and family psychology review, 16(3), 245-265. https://doi.org.10.1007/s10567-013-0138-y

Riggs, S. A., & Riggs, D. S. (2011). Risk and resilience in military families experiencing deployment: The role of the family attachment network. Journal of family psychology, 25(5), 675. https://doi.org.10.1037/a0025286

Sayers, S. L. (2011). Family reintegration difficulties and couples therapy for military veterans and their spouses. Cognitive and Behavioral Practice, 18(1), 108-119. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cbpra.2010.03.002

Sheppard, S. C., Malatras, J. W., & Israel, A. C. (2010). The impact of deployment on US military families. American Psychologist, 65(6), 599. https://doi.org.10.1037/a0020332