Pathways of Risk and Resilience: Impact of a Family Resilience Program on Active-Duty Military Parents.
Over the past decade, studies into the impact of wartime deployment and related adversities on service members and their families have offered empirical support for systemic models of family functioning and a more nuanced understanding of the mechanisms by which stress and trauma reverberate across family and partner relationships. They have also advanced our understanding of the ways in which families may contribute to the resilience of children and parents contending with the stressors of serial deployments and parental physical and psychological injuries. This study is the latest in a series designed to further clarify the systemic functioning of military families and to explicate the role of resilient family processes in reducing symptoms of distress and poor adaptation among family members. Drawing upon the implementation of the Families Overcoming Under Stress (FOCUS) Family Resilience Program at 14 active-duty military installations across the United States, structural equation modeling was conducted with data from 434 marine and navy active-duty families who participated in the FOCUS program. The goal was to better understand the ways in which parental distress reverberates across military family systems and, through longitudinal path analytic modeling, determine the pathways of program impact on parental distress. The findings indicated significant cross-influence of distress between the military and civilian parents within families, families with more distressed military parents were more likely to sustain participation in the program, and reductions in distress among both military and civilian parents were significantly mediated by improvements in resilient family processes. These results are consistent with family systemic and resilient models that support preventive interventions designed to enhance family resilient processes as an important part of comprehensive services for distressed military families.
UCLA Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, Los Angeles, CA.
William R
WR
Saltzman
UCLA Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, Los Angeles, CA.
Patricia
P
Lester
UCLA Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, Los Angeles, CA.
Norweeta
N
Milburn
Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery, Bethesda, MD.
Kirsten
K
Woodward
UCLA Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, Los Angeles, CA.
Judith
J
Stein
D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D000328:Adult; D005192:Family Health; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D008297:Male; D066067:Military Family / Q000523:psychology*; D008889:Military Personnel; D008960:Models, Psychological; D009326:Naval Medicine; D010290:Parents / Q000523:psychology*; D055500:Resilience, Psychological; D013315:Stress, Psychological / Q000523:psychology / Q000628:therapy*; D014481:United States
Family Intervention; Family Resilience; Family Trauma; Military Family; Military Parent; Resilience; familia militar; intervención familiar; padre militar; resiliencia; resiliencia familiar; trauma familiar; 军人家庭; 军人家长; 家庭创伤; 家庭干预; 家庭韧性; 韧性