Mental health of people in the military depends on social inclusion: why not for all of us?
| Pages | 201-207 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/MHSI-06-2017-0027 |
| Published date | 14 August 2017 |
| Date | 14 August 2017 |
| Author | Sue Holttum |
| Subject Matter | Health & social care,Mental health,Social inclusion |
Mental health of people in the
military depends on social inclusion:
why not for all of us?
Sue Holttum
Abstract
Purpose –The purpose of this paper is to discuss five recent papers on military people and those
close to them, and to suggest how taking into account their families and sense of social inclusion is key to
mental well-being.
Design/methodology/approach –There are four papers about military people’s adjustment when they
return from a war zone, often with experience of traumatic stress. A fifth paper discusses getting soldiers back
to war when they experience traumatic stress.
Findings –The studies on reintegration into civilian life focus mainly on the family. They suggest that
involvement of the spouse or close partner in treatment may be crucial. The military person and their family
are faced with forging new roles and ways of doing things. Joint treatment may best help them do this and
functioning well as a family with everyone feeling they belong. The fifth paper argues for similar kinds of social
support and sense of belonging, but to the military rather than the family, to support return to battle.
Originality/value –Few studies to date have included military people’s spouses or intimate par tners.
These studies either i nclude these contacts or pay attention to the so cial context when con sidering
military people return ing home or experiencing tr aumatic stress and injur ies. Attention to the soci al
context may protect social inclusion when military people return home, or support their military role.
The potential contribution of working with that context has lessons for civilian mental health services in
preserving social inclusion.
Keywords Social inclusion, Military, Reintegration, PTSD, Veteran
Paper type Viewpoint
Many military people (army, air-force and navy) have difficulty getting back into civilian life when
they return home from time in a war zone (Freytes et al., 2017). Some experience post-traumatic
stress disorder (PTSD) or brain injury related to their combat experiences (Elnitsky et al., 2017).
However, they often delay seeking help because of concerns about mental health stigma. Even if
they get help it is seldom geared to support their family (Monk et al., 2017). Yet families can suffer
greatly and break up without the right support (Freytes et al., 2017). Then everyone suffers,
including any children in the family.
In this Research Watch article I discuss recently published research on the experiences of military
service people and the people close to them. Recent research is increasingly focusing on not
only military people as individuals, but those around them and the importance of their sense of
belonging to a social group. The social groups in our lives affect how we see ourselves, and they
are important for our mental well-being (Haslam, 2014). In relation to getting military people back
to war, this has been recognised since the Second World War (Gindi et al., 2016), but even so,
not much research on mental health in military people has included the social context. I discuss
five recent papers that include this context. Four are about the well-being of military people and
their families when the military person returns home (Elnitsky et al., 2017; Freytes et al., 2017;
Hollingsworth et al., 2016; Monk et al., 2017). The fifth is a modern take on getting fighters back
to war (Gindi et al., 2016). Perhaps surprisingly, the fifth paper has interesting things in common
with the first four. Getting back home and getting back to war are very different, but it appears
Sue Holttum is a Senior
Lecturer at the Salomons
Centre for Applied Psychology,
Canterbury ChristChurch
University,Tunbridge Wells, UK.
DOI 10.1108/MHSI-06-2017-0027 VOL. 21 NO. 4 2017, pp. 201-207, © Emerald Publishing Limited, ISSN 2042-8308
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MENTALHEALTH AND SOCIAL INCLUSION
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