Military Deployment Analysis

focus groups. The purpose of this study was to establish a clear understanding of the behavior and effects that military deployments had on adolescents and their families. Plus, this study is also specifically meant to explore different coping strategies for adolescents while their family member is deployed. This study also acknowledged that many school counselors and teachers do not have enough composure to handle these behaviors and emotions from students that deal with deployment. Studies believe that the school staff needs to be offered more extensive training on how to properly deal with children who are experiencing military deployment and present opportunities for children to discuss their emotions and problems they are facing with
More recent findings with deployed service members with children have shown problems with sleeping, higher stress levels and anxiety, declining grades, an increase in maladaptive child behaviors, and increased rates of child maltreatment. Additionally, one of the major effects that have taken a toll on military families and children are psychosocial and behavioral effects. According to Mansfield, the stress of combat deployment had a negative effect on children. Children who had parents that were deployed more than 12 months had the highest measure of psychosocial and behavioral effects. This finding displays that children begin to lose their resiliency the more extensive deployments are. It is critical to understand these personal effects and behaviors to assist healthcare professionals that are working with these children. Lester (2010) who is a psychiatrist and director of the Nathanson Family Resilience center at the University of California finds that children between the ages of 6 and 12 with a deployed parent typically have a higher chance of psychosocial problems than the rest of the population. These effects include problems such a depression, anxiety, aggression and many other issues. He also determined that increased prolonged deployments had a strong correlation to higher levels of stress. Unlike Lester, Chandra (2009) conducted a
Another family focused intervention program is called Families Overcoming Under Stress (FOCUS) Hornback (2014). This program is created by a group of students from Harvard that is based on programs to treat families going through parental depression. The sole purpose of FOCUS is to help families relate to one another about similar deployments experiences. Each family that participated in the program discussed their deployment experience to share a mutual understanding of what they all have to go through. The goal is to improve communication skills, emotional regulation, problem solving, and mutual understanding. That is, approximately 488 FOCUS families have indicated lower stress levels and higher levels of relaxation. Similarly, Rosenblum (2015) discusses the SMF program as another family focused group model to help families cope with deployment stress. The SMF Multifamily Group Model is a 13-session self-care group that promotes resiliency and prevention factors within military families. The model was adapted from a civilian model. The SMF model is similar to the FOCUS program because it serves as a way to allow families to share their stories about deployments. Both of the programs share the goals of cohesion, mutual understanding, and rapport. The difference between the two programs is that the SMF model is more structured than