PDA

View Full Version : As number of deployments rises, military families turn to more resources to cope



thedrifter
12-26-08, 07:42 AM
As number of deployments rises, military families turn to more resources to cope

08:24 PM PST on Thursday, December 25, 2008

By MARK MUCKENFUSS
The Press-Enterprise


Reports in recent months on the state of the military family have not been encouraging.

Earlier this month, The Associated Press reported that military documents showed a 12 percent increase in the divorce rate among Marines in the past year. Recent studies, including at least one conducted by the military, show an elevated risk of domestic violence among military personnel and veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder. Cases of post-traumatic stress are on the rise.

The strain placed on relationships by military deployments is never easy. But the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have brought an unprecedented number of repeated deployments that experts say put even more demands upon individual soldiers and their families.

Kathleen West is associate director of the FOCUS project out of UCLA's Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior. The project, designed to help families deal with stresses of separation and reunification, is being implemented at nine military bases, including the Twentynine Palms Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center and Camp Pendleton. The program works to identify and counsel families struggling with the changes deployment brings.

"What we're realizing is it's not so much a deployment cycle as a deployment spiral," West said. "Every time Dad leaves, he changes while he is out in theater or on a training mission. At the same time the family had changed."

Children get older. Spouses learn to be more independent.

"He's coming back to a spouse who has changed and they have to reintegrate with each other," West said. "It's an unprecedented challenge that our service members have been going through."

The FOCUS project, West said, was born out of the Department of Defense's own recognition of the need.

"In 2007," she said, "the (department's) mental health board report came out saying there were not adequate mental health and family health services."

PRE-EMPTING CRISIS

The program's goal is to reach families before they are in crisis.

"We're not necessarily seeing families that are falling apart," West said. "We really want to see them before they fall apart."

At Camp Pendleton, Marianne Espinoza helps coordinate FOCUS. She is a family readiness coordinator. Her husband, Armando, a helicopter pilot and Marine veteran of 21 years, has been deployed seven times, five of those since 2001. He is preparing for an eighth deployment in March.

Espinoza said dealing with separations and reunifications is a challenge. But even though there may be some shortcomings in the support for military personnel and their families, she said things have improved over the years.

"I remember not having any home support in 1987," Espinoza said. "In the past five years, there's been a great amount of support. You can call someone and talk 24/7. That's something we promote all the time."

Being a veteran of seven deployments, she said, doesn't necessarily make things easier.

"Every deployment is different," she said. "You don't get used to them."

The Espinozas have three adolescent sons. They don't stop growing while Armando is deployed, so the family dynamic is always changing. Readjusting when her husband returns from a tour of duty is different each time. The key to making it work, she said, is making sure the lines of communication are kept open.

That's something that is easier these days as well, she said. When Armando was deployed in the first Gulf War, the couple was limited to written letters, which took three weeks to be delivered. Earlier this year, she talked to him on her cell phone while she and their boys were at Disneyland. She even sent him a photo over her phone.

When he was in Iraq for Christmas last year, the family reserved a special room on the base where they had a private videoconference with Armando on a big-screen television and opened gifts together.

"We had 20 minutes and it was really, really nice," Marianne said.

NUMBERS INCREASE

But Marianne Espinoza knows that other couples struggle. She deals with them on a daily basis. So does Peter Morris, program manager for Family Advocacy at the Marine base in Twentynine Palms

"Of the people we're seeing, it seems that multiple deployments are complicating their lives," Morris said.

Although the number of Marines seeking counseling in his program hasn't risen significantly in the past year, he said, the percentage of those seeking help with anger management has nearly doubled. In fiscal year 2007, Morris said, his program saw 77 clients for anger management out of a total of 535. For 2008, the total number of clients rose slightly to 560, but anger management cases jumped to 144.

Morris attributes part of the increase to better promotion of his program's services and an increased effort to identify and treat Marines who may be having problems.

But, he said, "I think the doubling may also reflect that for some individuals the stress is telling."

TRAUMA TRANSFERS

Helga West is president and CEO of Witness Justice, a Maryland-based organization that advocates for victims of violent crime and, more recently, military personnel. A voluntary Web-based survey conducted by Witness Justice showed the trauma of the battlefield being transferred to the home front.

West admits that the 248 survey participants are "not very representative" of the military as a whole. More than 300,000 have served in Iraq and/or Afghanistan. Nonetheless, she believes the results should raise concerns. She points to the fact that 60 percent of the respondents said their family relationships had changed after deployment. Fifty-five percent said that family life was challenging after their return.

West worries that families may be at increased risk of domestic violence. She hopes to see a national program on family safety that would help veterans identify triggers to potential violent behavior.

Such a program, she said, should provide "basic tools that families can use in the home to have a dialogue about what some of those triggers might be."

In October, West's organization brought together several national agencies for a briefing on domestic violence among military families. While it's clear the military establishment is looking at the issue, she said, "There's very little focus on the need for education and understanding, not only in a therapeutic setting but at home."

Morris said he hasn't observed an increase in domestic violence at the Twentynine Palms base. He said the number of domestic calls military police respond to may be greater than the community at large, but that doesn't mean there is a higher incidence of violence.

"In the military, when (Marines) are unhappy with what the neighbors are doing, they call the military police," he said. "We get hooked up with these folks long before they would ever be identified in the (civilian) community. While we have a lot of reports, our serious reports are very low."

DEALING WITH STRESS

But Morris said there is little doubt that deployment and its aftermath place stress on families. Military programs geared toward helping families deal with such issues are being bolstered, he said.

"Some programs that have been around for awhile have been expanded and given a lot more money," Morris said. "Marine Corps Family Team Building went from a small office with a staff of two to a staff of seven or eight." His own office has a staff of 13.

New programs, such as FOCUS, continue to be added.

At its San Marcos campus, near Camp Pendleton, USC will start a military social-work program next fall geared specifically to working with military families. The program is receiving funding through Congress.

"We're the first school of social work to do anything like this," said program chairman Jose Coll. Courses will focus on post-traumatic stress disorder, military family systems and readjustment issues.

Coll said most of the issues in family reintegration are no secret.

"In general we have studied this quite well and understand what's happening in the dynamics of the family," he said. "What's unique in this war is the amount of deployments."

His major concern is the same as that of many other experts. It's a question yet to be answered, he said.

"How many deployments can you ask one person to do?"

Reach Mark Muckenfuss at 951-368-9595 or mmuckenfuss@PE.com

Ellie