Pathways of Risk and Resilience: Impact of a Family Resilience Program on Active‐Duty Military Parents

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/famp.12238
• Author: Kirsten Woodward,Patricia Lester,Norweeta Milburn,Judith Stein,William R. Saltzman
• Date: 01 December 2016
• Published date: 01 December 2016

Pathways of Risk and Resilience: Impact of a Family

Resilience Program on Active-Duty Military Parents

WILLIAM R. SALTZMAN*

PATRICIA LESTER*

NORWEETA MILBURN*

KIRSTEN WOODWARD

†

JUDITH STEIN*

Over the past decade, studies into the impact of wartime deployment and related adversi-

ties on service members and their families have offered empirical support for systemic mod-

els 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 fam-

ily processes in reducing symptoms of distress and poor adaptation among family members.

Drawing upon the implementation of the Families Overcoming Under Stress (FOCUS) Fam-

ily 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 longitudinalpath analytic modeling, determine the pathways ofprogram impact on

parental distress. The findings indicated significant cross-influence of distress between the

military and civilian parentswithin 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 impor-

tant part of comprehensive services for distressed military families.

Keywords: Family Resilience; Resilience; Military Family; Family Trauma; Military

Parent; Family Intervention

Fam Proc 55:633–646, 2016

INTRODUCTION

The costs of war are incalculable. And yet, history has shown that war can also drive

advances in science and technology that can serve the public good (Cutter & Clarke,

*UCLA Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, Los Angeles, CA.

†

Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery, Bethesda, MD.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to William R. Saltzman, 2179 Kinneloa

Canyon Rd. Pasadena, CA 91107. E-mail: wsaltzman@sbcglobal.net.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official

policy or position of the Department of the Navy, Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.

633

Family Process, Vol. 55, No. 4, 2016 ©2016 Family Process Institute

doi: 10.1111/famp.12238