(From a press release)
Helping Military Families Help Themselves
For a civilian, it’s hard to fathom the stress a military family faces when a parent or spouse is sent to combat zones. Long and often multiple wartime deployments take a toll not only on the service member on the front lines but on family members back at home. According to recent figures released by the RAND Corporation, one in five veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars may suffer from psychological health problems, which can add the strain on military family members.
Now, a program initiated at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and supported by the U.S. Navy’s Bureau of Medicine and Surgery is reaching out to military families to help prevent the personal and family problems such stress can bring. Project FOCUS (Families OverComing Under Stress) is now being rolled out to nine military bases across the nation and in Okinawa, Japan.
“There is increasing awareness that military families, especially the children, can be significantly affected when a parent is deployed, and there is even greater psychological wear and tear when there are multiple deployments,” says Patricia Lester, MD, an assistant professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at UCLA and the director of the FOCUS program. “The spouse left behind is suddenly thrust into the role of being a single parent; routines are interrupted; the children may not understand where their mom or dad has gone; and the service member on the front lines is constantly worried about how their family is doing back home.”
The FOCUS program provides parents and children with customized training that will address the impact of wartime deployment on families and helps them learn very specific communication and problem-solving skills to address these challenges. In addition, FOCUS trainers will provide outreach to groups within military communities to raise awareness about the kinds of pressures families face and to let them know help is available to cope with deployment.
“We build resiliency,” Lester says. “It’s a three-pronged approach to restore a psychological balance to the family, promote future resiliency, and increase knowledge and understanding among the military family culture.”
Families meet with counselors in multiple sessions. Some of the sessions are only with the parents, some are only with the children, and the rest are family sessions. Each session focuses on helping family members identify and share their concerns and fears about a spouse or parent being deployed to a war zone. In separate sessions with parents and children, FOCUS trainers teach them skills to help manage their emotions, solve problems within the family, set goals, and communicate with one another.
“If there are five family members, there’s a good chance that there are five different stories of what that most recent deployment experience was like,” Lester says. “Family members often don’t want to ‘burden’ each other with their personal problems, but in these exceptional circumstances of long-term separations, building a shared family narrative can be very helpful in reestablishing a close family identity and building its strength.”
— Source: University of California, Los Angeles, Health Sciences
