Military Family Mental Health: Implications for Preventive Interventions

Approximately 2 million children have been affected by parental deployment to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (OEF/OIF), 40% of them younger than five years old (DOD, 2008). While military families have shown remarkable resilience throughout these conflicts (Elder & Clipp, 2006), very young children are particularly vulnerable to deployment separation given the developmental processes occurring during these years (Cozza & Lieberman, 2007). Little research and evidence-based programming are available for these families at this time. This paper reports on the first phase of a 4-year study funded by the Department of Defense to develop and test a home-based intervention designed to mitigate the impact of deployment experiences on military families with young children. During the first phase of this study, standardized measures assessing PTSD, parenting stress, and psychological distress were administered to OEF/OIF service-member parents (N= 39) and spouses (N= 31) of very young children. 14% of service members met criteria for PTSD, 22% reported clinically significant parenting stress, and 54% were struggling with depression or anxiety. Spouses were functioning better than service members with only one meeting criteria for PTSD, 12% struggling with clinically significant parenting stress, and 48% exhibiting depression or anxiety. Of 17 service member-spouse matched pairs, concordance levels between spouse and service member reports of service member mental health were low on BSI subscales of anxiety, hostility and phobic anxiety. Implications for culturally responsive preventive interventions for military families will be discussed.