Deployment Psychology Blog

June is PTSD Awareness Month, and one of the most important things to understand about posttraumatic stress is that it often doesn't look the way people expect. In military service members, veterans, first responders, emergency medical personnel, and others who work in high-pressure environments, PTSD frequently doesn't look like falling apart. It can look like competence.

There are military families living quietly among us who carry a weight that most of us can scarcely imagine. They are the spouses whose hearts shattered at the loss of their partner and experienced another shattering as they found words to tell their children that their parent would never come home. They are the children who learned, at ages far too young, to live without their mom or dad. Surviving military families — those who have lost a service member parent or spouse — benefit greatly from a mental health community that understands the unique dimensions of their loss and is equipped to meet their needs.