Following up on Christy Collette’s piece on "Military Family Resilience during COVID-19," this week’s blog will share additional information about the unique impacts of the pandemic on military families. Using information gathered directly from five different military families during the first wave of COVID-19, this blog will highlight some of the important issues behavioral health providers should consider when working with military families.
The number of "Soldier and Department of the Army Civilian mishap fatalities reported between Oct. 1, 2019, and Sept. 30, 2020," according to an Army press release regarding the annual assessment of the Army Safety Program for fiscal 2020.
The weekly Research Update contains the latest news, journal articles, useful links from around the web. Some of this week's topics include:
● The impact of family stressors and resources on military spouse’s perception of post-deployment reunion stress.
● An advanced perspective on moral challenges and their health-related outcomes through an integration of the moral distress and moral injury theories.
● Coping and Mental Health Differences among Active Duty Service Members and Their Spouses with High and Low Levels of Marital Warmth.
As a military Veteran and a military spouse, deployments were an accepted and many times anticipated part of my life. I met and married my Marine husband in Jacksonville, North Carolina. He was assigned to a Marine Special Ops Command and deployed regularly. For years two through six of our marriage, my husband was gone 10 months out of every year. Throughout the years, he has missed every holiday at least once. For some, I don’t think he has ever been home. As I recently reflected on these missed holidays and the challenges that went along with them, I came up with a list of my 10 Holiday Survival Tips for a military family.