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Study to review what makes military families resilient

The US Defense Department is spending $1.3 million to study what makes certain military families resilient, in an effort to build more effective reintegration programs for service men and women returning from deployment, according to a press release.

“Returning back into civilian society can be more challenging on many accounts than the actual deployment itself,” study researcher Adrian Blow, PhD, said.

To help the Defense Department improve its reintegration of troops into civilian life and aid suicide prevention and mental health intervention programs, Blow, an associate professor of human development and family studies at Michigan State University, and colleagues will survey about 600 members of the Michigan National Guard infantry who recently returned from a year-long deployment in Afghanistan. They also will study the soldiers’ families by using data collected from comprehensive interviews. Follow-up surveys also will be conducted 1 and 2 years out.

Study researcher Lisa Gorman, PhD, director of the Michigan Public Health Institute, said most National Guard service members and their families actually “[do] well despite 12 months of separation, multiple deployments, high levels of combat exposure and living in local communities with limited military support compared to their active duty counterparts.

“If we can identify common themes among those who flourish during extremely stressful times, we believe the project can inform prevention and intervention programs in ways that promote wellness for service members and their families,” Gorman said.

A second grant from the Ethel and James Flinn Foundation will use $200,000 to train about 1,000 mental health counselors to work with returning families who might be dealing with the effects of posttraumatic stress disorder, depression, unemployment, marital strife, substance abuse, and suicide.

“It can take about a year, but the majority of families work through the stress of reintegration,” Blow said. “Most of the cases are about strength and resilience, about families dealing with big transitions and, sometimes, traumatic events.”

Disclosure: The researchers report no relevant financial disclosures.