The Well-Being of Children from Military Families

Abstract

Since 2001, the rapid pace of deployments of military personnel who are parents has created additional concern for the emotional and behavioral health of their children. Repeated deployments create prolonged periods of uncertainty and an increased sense of danger on the part of children and at-home spouses. Children of all ages have higher rates of anxiety and depressive symptoms. Academic problems for children of deployed parents also occur more frequently. The psychological stress of both at-home and deployed parents is associated with the child's level of emotional distress. Awareness of the possibility of greater challenges facing military families today is warranted to identify distress and referral to treatment.

The Impact of Parental Operational Stress Injury on Child Mental Health and Well-Being: A Scoping Review

“…Research has indicated that maternal mental health can mitigate the impact of OSI on child development (Dinshtein, Dekel, & Polliack, 2011;Lambert, Holzer, & Hasbun, 2014;Lieberman & Horn, 2013;Lincoln & Sweeten, 2011;Maholmes, 2012;McGuinness & McGuinness, 2014). A study that examined the impact of warm and caring maternal relationships on the children of PTSD veterans indicated that, as adults, children of PTSD veterans experienced less emotional distress and had a greater capacity for intimacy (Dinshtein et al, 2011).…”

“…Parental OSI has been shown to create general academic and psychological functioning problems(Cat- ani, 2010;Cozza, Haskins, & Lerner, 2013;Gorman et al, 2010), including issues with a child's affective regulation, emotional reciprocity, social interaction(Gorman et al, 2010;Selimbasic, Sinanovic, & Avdibegovic, 2012), anger(Gorman et al, 2010), lower performance in autobiographical and working-memory tasks(Taheri et al, 2012), attentional issues (Boricevic Mar sanic, AukstMargetic, Jukic, et al, 2014;McGuinness & McGuinness, 2014), and hyperactivity(Selimbasic et al, 2012).…”