Military parent mental health, parenting stress and child functioning at reintegration: A snapshot guiding intervention development

Over two million children have experienced at least one parental deployment in the post-September 11th wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Young children (age birth to 5 years) are disproportionately represented in military families. Although research identifying the effects of deployment on children of all ages is beginning to emerge, there has been little empirical investigation of parent mental health, the stresses and demands among parents of young children or interventions to support them. The authors conducted a series of studies funded by the Department of Defense to build and evaluate a home-based, reflective parenting program for returning National Guard/Reserve parents and their very young children. We applied a community-based participatory approach during each phase of the research. In this presentation, we characterize the experiences and functioning of OEF/OIF parents (n=281) from all studies. Specifically, we will characterize relationships between mental health status, including combat stress, anxiety and depression, parenting stress, and couple, family and child functioning. Preliminary findings reveal significant relationships between parent mental health and parenting stress (p<0.001), parenting stress and child behavioral problems (p<0.001), and parent mental health and child behavior problems (p<.05). This is the first study to investigate relationships between mental health and associated constructs in a sample of NG/R parents of young children during reintegration. These findings directly informed the development of a military-specific and developmentally relevant reintegration program for NG/R families with very young children. Implications for public health practice and mental health treatment with military families will be discussed.