Building Psychological Resilience in Military Personnel

Military personnel and their families face innumerable challenges. Deployed soldiers are exposed to a wide range of stressors, from the continuous, low-level experience of living in a strange and austere environment for a lengthy period of time, to acute, traumatic events that occur during combat, all of which can lead to long-term psychological problems like PTSD, depression, and substance abuse, and even suicide. Back home, husbands and wives of deployed soldiers face an increased likelihood of depression, anxiety and sleep disorders, while their children are more likely to exhibit behavioural issues and negative outcomes in school. In the face of these persistent problems, researchers have consistently identified resilience, a term derived from the psychological and psychiatric literature, as perhaps the single most important factor predicting successful outcomes for military personnel and their families. In this book, editors Robert Sinclair and Thomas Britt and a distinguished group of researchers investigate the concept of resilience, its essential role in normal psychological development, and its relevance within various occupational contexts unique to the military. In the second part of the book, the authors evaluate existing programs for developing and maintaining resilience that have been implemented in various branches of our armed forces.