Military Psychology最新文献

Improving pathways of care should be based on a recognition of the distinct and specific groups of professionals within the military environment. This study looked to explore the types of development needs of military mental health providers, examine the implications of unmet needs, discover mitigating factors, and evaluate barriers and challenges experienced by uniformed healthcare staff. This research project used a mixed-method approach utilizing the Delphi Method to find consensus and measure importance. A group of 23 senior international military mental health experts (N = 23) took part in the study. Findings revealed that growth, respect, sense of belonging, satisfaction, competence, expertise, good communication, time for self-care, physical training, rest, and nutrition, were the most important needs. Main ways to mitigate the aversive effects of unmet needs were effective lines of communication and consideration of needs. The study found that neglecting the needs of clinicians caused wide-ranging implications, mainly burnout and stress, but also poor work motivation, poor treatment outcome, decreased morale, and lack of trust and belief in the organization. The Delphi methodology revealed that within the organizational domain, leaders' general support, having a team, and good relationships were crucial, while resilience, independence, sense of purpose, and sense of meaning were the key factors in the professional attribute category. Subject matter experts (SMEs) agreed that overwhelming demands posed the biggest challenge for this group of professionals.

Reintegration stress is commonly reported by returning Veterans with post-trauma distress and associated with mental health and functioning difficulties. Interventions are needed to reduce reintegration stress and provide a pathway to improve Veterans' connections with their families, friends, and communities. The present study compared the effectiveness of Trauma Informed Guilt Reduction Therapy (TrIGR) and Supportive Care Therapy (SCT) in reducing reintegration stress, assessed by the Military to Civilian Questionnaire (M2C-Q) at post-treatment and 3- and 6-month follow-up. Data were derived from a randomized controlled trial treating U.S. military Veterans endorsing trauma-related guilt stemming from an event that occurred during deployment to the recent conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan (N = 145). Intent to treat analyses using mixed models indicated a significant treatment * time interaction (p = .004) whereby patients randomized to TrIGR reported significantly lower reintegration stress compared to those in SCT by the 6-month follow-up. Between-condition effect sizes were d = 0.11 at post-treatment and d = 0.37 and d = 0.57 at 3- and 6-month follow-up assessments, respectively. Targeting trauma-related guilt may be an effective pathway to help facilitate the process of reintegration to civilian life for some Veterans.

Despite the long use of surveys in veterans' needs assessments, a disconnect persists between the veterans' needs and the available services. This study employs a hermeneutical framework to semantically analyze open-ended responses and investigate how veterans' perceptions of service barriers are formed. We analyzed 3,325 open-ended responses specifying their perceived barriers in Texas Veterans Needs Survey data from 2023 (n = 16,733). Our analysis revealed that the hurdles stem from the combination of (1) obedience to authority, (2) covert mental health challenges, (3) hopelessness, and (4) self-defeating prophecy created by complex systems and lack of trust. For instance, many reported being told they were not eligible for services or only hinted at their psychological struggles as a hurdle rather than explicitly citing a history of denial or mental health conditions. Fear of unwanted consequences, procrastination due to the self-sufficient mindset, and comparisons to other veterans were observed in relation to the "military mind-set." Minorities and those who withheld their demographic information were more presented in the analytical sample than in the overall survey. Contextualization of qualitative data revealed how the military mindset is intertwined with the veterans' service-seeking behavior. The findings may improve the interpretability and validity of future veteran needs assessments.

The extent to which self-regulatory tendencies predict military leadership ability is unknown. In the present study, we assessed the relationship between these tendencies and military leadership competency. During a United States Army (USA) Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) Advanced Camp capstone leader development and assessment course, 234 cadets completed a survey measuring five self-regulatory tendencies: self-control, cognitive reappraisal, emotional suppression, grit, and temporal self-distancing. Overall camp performance scores were used to assess and quantify leadership ability. Non-parametric bivariate correlations and regression analyses revealed that only cognitive reappraisal and temporal self-distancing significantly correlated with leadership ability. Notably, temporal self-distancing emerged as the most robust predictor of effective leadership. The present findings suggest that strategies for improving specific self-regulatory tendencies may enhance military leadership effectiveness.

This study investigated the relationship between social support and communication quality among combatants and their partners, and the partners' mental health during Israel's Swords of Iron War against Hamas. Mental health was assessed through emotional, social, and psychological dimensions. Communication quality was evaluated by assessing both positive and negative aspects of electronic and face-to-face channels. The sample included 201 women in various relationship statuses with men who were recruited as combatants: married, cohabiting, and in a stable relationship. Most women reported positive electronic and face-to-face communication with their partners during the war. Nonetheless, nearly 20% mentioned an increase in the negative aspects of face-to-face communication compared to pre-war conditions. Negative communication correlated with poorer psychological health. No direct link was found between positive communication and mental health. However, an indirect relationship was observed, with perceived social support serving as a mediator. The psychological dimension ranked highest among the mental health dimensions, followed by the social dimension, with the lowest ranking found for the emotional dimension.

Symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are highly prevalent among Veterans with chronic pain. Considerable research has examined the intersection of chronic pain and PTSD symptoms. However, it remains unclear whether changes in PTSD may potentially serve a mechanistic role in improving unhelpful pain cognitions for individuals with chronic pain. The present research contributes to the foundational knowledge by addressing this question. Baseline data from a randomized controlled trial targeting pain-related disability for Veterans (n = 103; mean age 43.66; SD = 10.17) with musculoskeletal pain and depression and/or PTSD symptoms were used. Cross-sectional mediation analyses showed that PTSD symptoms mediated the relationship between pain severity and pain catastrophizing, and between pain severity and pain acceptance. After controlling for depression, the mediation involving pain catastrophizing remained significant, while the mediation for pain acceptance did not. Although limitations exist, results point to several treatment recommendations, including ensuring that depressive affect, PTSD-specific symptoms, and attention to both body and mind are included in treatment. Results also provide preliminary evidence for examining these associations longitudinally to improve our understanding of this population and corresponding treatment recommendations.

Successful teamwork is essential to ensure critical care air transport (CCAT) patients receive effective care. Despite the importance of team performance, current training methods rely on subjective performance assessments and do not evaluate performance at the team level. Researchers have developed the Team Dynamics Measurement System (TDMS) to provide real-time, objective measures of team coordination to assist trainers in providing CCAT aircrew with feedback to improve performance. The first iteration of TDMS relied exclusively on communication flow patterns (i.e., who was speaking and when) to identify instances of various communication types such as closed loop communication (CLC). The research presented in this paper significantly advances the TDMS project by incorporating natural language processing (NLP) to identify CLC. The addition of NLP to the existing TDMS resulted in greater accuracy and fewer false alarms in identifying instances of CLC compared to the previous flow-based implementation. We discuss ways in which these improvements will facilitate instructor feedback and support further refinement of the TDMS.

The U.S. Army has a vested interest in retaining the skilled personnel necessary to achieve its mission and strategic goals. A wealth of research has investigated the retention process and what influences service member decisions to stay in the military. While families are an important influence on soldier retention decisions, research on the mechanism by which this happens is lacking. This report explores the relationship between spouse attitudes and perceptions, resource use, and soldier retention almost two years later, using a proposed theoretical model. Our results generally support our model, with the important change that resource use and unmet needs and stress were not directly associated with specific attitudes toward staying in the military as we had expected. Instead, the association was accounted for by relationship with general attitudes toward the military. Spouses whose needs were unmet after seeking help from available resources experienced greater stress, and spouse unmet needs and reports of greater stress were associated with worse general attitudes toward the military; worse general attitudes toward the military were associated with less inclination to stay a military family; which in turn predicted soldier turnover almost two years later. As the research in this report shows, providing benefits to military spouses is also associated with a tangible and important outcome for the military: improved service member retention.

The current study leveraged data from a representative sample of U.S. women veterans to investigate factors that differentiate women veterans who report lifetime suicidal ideation (SI), suicidal ideation and suicidal attempt(s) (SI/SA), and no SI/SA. We examined sociodemographic, military, and other mental and medical health characteristics as potential risk indicators differentiating women veterans with only SI, SI/SA, and no SI/SA. We used multinomial logistic regression analyses and post-hoc relative important analyses to determine the relative contribution of significant variables. Relative to women veterans with SI only, those with SI/SA reported more adverse childhood experiences, and were more likely to screen positive for alcohol and substance use disorders. Relative to women veterans with no SI/SA, those with SI only had greater cumulative trauma burden, and were more likely to screen positive for major depressive disorder and disability in activities of daily living (ADLs) and/or instrumental ADLs. The present study's determination of indicators that differentiate suicide risk groups of women veterans underscores the value of a nuanced approach to operationalizing suicide-related outcomes. The results may serve as a foundation for additional research and support targeted prevention and intervention efforts.

Military personnel are repeatedly exposed to multiple stressors, and are sometimes characterized by high levels of anger. Evidence suggests that this anger can become dysfunctional, and impact the health status of populations chronically exposed to stress. In particular, rumination (understood as perseverative thoughts about a past event), provides a theoretical framework for investigating how anger may impact stress regulation abilities in military personnel declared fit for deployment. This exploratory study aimed therefore to examine the impact of the anger profile on psychological suffering in terms of burnout and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), along with the reactivity of the autonomic nervous system, measured as cardiac variability. One hundred and seventeen French soldiers were tested before deployment to Operation BARKHANE. Anger rumination, burnout, and PTSD symptoms were assessed using questionnaires, and cardiac variability was measured as the questionnaires were completed. The results revealed two profiles related to anger trait and anger rumination. Burnout and PTSD scores were higher among military personnel with high levels of anger trait and rumination, and this group also had lower parasympathetic activity and flexibility after completing the questionnaires. These results suggest that there may be a link between an angry profile and psychological suffering, notably burnout and PTSD. Rumination could be involved in this link, as it is associated with poor adaptation to stress in a military context. Prospective researches including post-deployment will establish whether this ruminative response can account for the relationship between problematic anger, stress regulatory capacities and psychological health in military populations.