The effect of war injury and combat deployment on military wives’ mental health symptoms

Abstract

Background: Although much has been learned about the physical and psychological impacts of deployment and combat injury on military service members, less is known about the effects of these experiences on military spouses. Methods: The present study examined self-reported mental health symptoms (using the Brief Symptom Inventory [BSI]-18 and the posttraumatic stress disorder [PTSD] Checklist [PCL-C]) in wives of service members who were combat-injured (CI; n = 60); noninjured with cumulative deployment longer than 11 months (NI-High; n = 51); and noninjured with cumulativel deployment less than 11 months (NI-Low; n = 53).Results: 36.7% and 11.7% of CI wives endorsed above threshold symptoms on the PCL-C and overall BSI-18, respectively. Multivariate linear regressions revealed that

Military Spouse Mental Health Outcomes After Receiving Short-Term Counseling Services

“…Researchers reported rates of anxiety symptoms among military spouses ranging from 6.5% to 12.1% (Mailey et al, 2018; Steenkamp et al, 2018; Sullivan, Park, & Riviere, 2021). Scholars have investigated military-related stressors in relationship to anxiety among military spouses, such as the combat injury of the service member (Cozza et al, 2022) and transitions to overseas duty stations (Elliott, 2020). During deployments, some military spouses carry an invisible labor of limiting sharing of distressful information with the service member (Carter et al, 2020), which perpetuates distress.…”