Blog posts with the tag "Service Members"

Staff Perspective: Surviving Military Families: Supporting Parent-Child Relationships

By Elizabeth Burgin  on 10.06.2026 10:13 am
Elizabeth Burgin, Ph.D.

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.

Highlights from the 2026 Sleep and Fatigue Management in the DoW Convening

By  on 05.06.2026 4:08 pm

On 3-4 June 2026, the Sleep and Fatigue Management in the DoW Convening Event successfully brought together 138 military stakeholders, researchers, and policymakers in a hybrid format at the HJF Headquarters in Bethesda, MD. In direct response to evolving operational requirements and GAO guidance, the summit aimed to advance cross-agency collaboration, strategically track sleep health research, and address systemic barriers to sleep and fatigue management from both an operational and leadership perspective.

Staff Perspective: CDP’s Tool to Help Understand Readiness Evaluations

By Amanda McCabe  on 29.04.2026 10:11 am

Service members, including Active Duty (Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Space Force), Reserve Units, and National Guard members, are referred to network providers for a wide range of medical care, including behavioral health services. Receiving care outside of a military treatment facility can be more complex than typical civilian healthcare.

Staff Perspective: Chasing the High - Hedonic Dysregulation as a Pathway to Alcohol Abuse

By Kathryn Monsey  on 24.12.2025 2:32 pm

When we think about alcohol or substance abuse in the military, most of us jump to familiar explanations: PTSD, deployment trauma, combat stress. These are the headline drivers we expect to see on intake forms and clinical assessments. But lurking quietly, often unnoticed and unspoken, is another powerful risk factor, one that rarely makes it onto the paperwork or into clinical interviews: boredom.

Staff Perspective: What Providers Need to Know About the VA's Free Emergency Suicide Care for Veterans

By Lisa French  on 17.12.2025 11:20 am
Dr. Lisa French

I was recently talking to a civilian community mental health provider, and she asked me if I thought veterans were utilizing mental health care more due to both the VA MISSION Act and the VA COMPACT Act. I thought about it briefly and responded (acknowledging that I had no evidence to support my answer) that it usually takes years for change following laws like these. Then I paused to really think about how much I have heard about either of these veteran-focused acts/laws in my role as a psychologist or as a veteran, and the answer was: not much. So I thought this would be a great topic to share with our community of providers.

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