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Using Cognitive Behavioral Interventions to Help Children Cope with Parental Military Deployments

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Abstract

Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are associated with more deployments than in previous years. Recent estimates show 1.2 million school children have a parent that is serving in the active military. Family stress increases proportionately to the length of deployment and the perception of danger. In a recent study, twenty percent of children whose parent was being deployed were identified as “high risk” for psychosocial disturbances. A deployed parent represents a stressor reflecting ambiguous loss which prompts emotional distress. Cognitive behaviorally based prevention and intervention efforts have shown considerable promise with children experiencing a variety of disorders who do not necessarily have a deployed parent. For instance the Penn Resiliency Program has enjoyed considerable empirical support. It seems quite reasonable that these favorable results would generalize to a population of military children. This paper will briefly review the extant literature on the effects of parental deployment on children’s emotional well-being and then recommend a variety of cognitive behavioral interventions to enhance their psychological welfare.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Pennsylvania Psychiatric Institute/Penn State College of Medicine, 22 Northeast Dr., Hershey, PA, 17033, USA

    Robert D. Friedberg

  2. Penn State-Harrisburg, Middletown, PA, USA

    Gina M. Brelsford

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  1. Robert D. Friedberg
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  2. Gina M. Brelsford
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Correspondence to Robert D. Friedberg.

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Friedberg, R.D., Brelsford, G.M. Using Cognitive Behavioral Interventions to Help Children Cope with Parental Military Deployments. J Contemp Psychother 41, 229–236 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10879-011-9175-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10879-011-9175-3

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