We’ve all seen the heartwarming photos of a child greeting a parent who has returned from a military deployment. They’re beautiful, for sure, but for each picture we see, there are many unique challenges that military children and families face.
A new report by the American Academy of Pediatrics looks at some stressors that are unique to military families and reveals that pediatricians need to pay special attention to the mental health of children in military families.
Some highlights of the report include:
- Up to 2 million US children have been exposed to a wartime deployment of a loved one in the past 10 years.
- There are recent and emerging studies specifically describing the effects on children of parental wartime deployments.
- Maladaptive parental coping or distress may be the single most important predictor of child biopsychosocial symptoms during stressful situations, such as wartime deployment.
- Of the 60% of active duty service members who are married almost half (44%) have children
- Seventy-five percent of all military children are younger than 11 years.
- In 2005, half of the fighting forces in Iraq and Afghanistan were from the Selected Reserve, and although this has decreased to 15% to 20% of total deployed service members, more than 255,000 National Guard and Reserve service members had deployed by 2008
- The annual divorce rate among active duty soldiers in 2009 was 3.6%, up from 3.3% in 2007.
- In one survey, spouses indicated that the hardest thing about a deployment was hearing of subsequent deployments
- Many families have said that rest and recuperation leave is a difficult time for children because it often falls during the school year; children are distracted by anticipation, excitement, and a short period of visitation; and they then have to say goodbye all over again.
- More than one-third of children report excessive worry about their parent’s deployment.
- A parent survey noted 1 in 5 school-age children cope poorly, and a similar number have academic problems.
- In a survey of almost 4000 military spouses with and without deployed partners, researchers investigating depressive symptoms during pregnancy noted that twice as many women with deployed partners reported depressive symptoms before and after delivery compared with those whose partners were at home
- How well or poorly an individual or family responds to a given stressor, such as wartime deployment, is dependent on several factors:
- the individual’s previous experiences with stress;
- the meaning of this specific stress;
- the family context where the stress is experienced, including how the parent is coping; and
- the inherent, as well as external resources available to deal with the stress
Adolescent years can be a difficult time for all children and it is no less difficult for children of service members, especially those coping with a parent’s deployment. The report suggests that for pediatricians, asking “How are you doing with this deployment?” may be the single most important family assessment question.
The military community has already begun working to address many of the challenges above. Recently, we have used this space to highlight several tools, including Talk Listen Connect and MilitaryKidsConnect.org, created to support military children and families.
What other tools and resources for military kids and families do you know of?
