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Introduction: The influence of deployments on family relationships has hardly been investigated. Following a recently proposed new research strategy, military personnel with and without deployment-related life-threatening military incidents during deployment were compared. The hypothesis was that partner and family relationships of military personnel who experienced such an event would deteriorate more. Methods: This study included N = 255 military personnel who had a romantic partner (n = 78 of them had children) when deployed to Afghanistan. Of these, n = 68 military personnel experienced a deployment-related critical event during the deployment, n = 187 did not. Partnership quality was assessed using a semi-structured pre- and post-deployment interview. Results: The partner relationships of military personnel who experienced a deployment-related life-threatening military incident during deployment broke up significantly more often. The partner relationships of all military personnel deteriorated significantly, with greater deterioration after deployment in the group who faced such incidents. These results were independent of age, rank or number of previous deployments. In addition, there was a significant deterioration in the relationships between all military personnel and their children with greater deterioration after deployment in the group who faced such incidents. Conclusion: Life-threatening military incidents during a deployment abroad appear to have a considerable influence on the quality and stability of the partner and family relationships of military personnel. These findings can be used to inform the development of specific pre- and post-deployment measures and training. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Military servicemembers face substantial challenges due to war-related trauma exposure, including posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Individuals with deficits in inhibitory control (IC) may have an increased risk of developing PTSD due to a reduced ability to regulate their cognitive responses to and disengage from trauma-related stimuli. After Deployment, Adaptive Parenting Tools (ADAPT) is a mindfulnessinfused parenting program for military families that has also been found to have crossover effects on parental mental health. The present study examined whether fathers' IC at baseline affected their response to this emotional skills-focused intervention and further influenced their PTSD symptoms 1 year later. The sample included 282 male National Guard and Reserve (NG/R) service members who had recently been deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan. Fathers were randomly assigned to either the ADAPT program or a control condition, with IC measured at baseline and PTSD symptoms measured at baseline and 1-year follow-up. Intent-to-treat analyses revealed no significant main effect of the intervention on fathers' PTSD symptoms. However, fathers' IC moderated intervention effects on PTSD symptoms, f² = 0.03. The intervention had more beneficial effects on reducing fathers' PTSD symptoms for participants with low IC at baseline. These findings are consistent with compensatory effects in the risk moderation hypothesis, which suggests that prevention or intervention programs are more effective for high-risk subgroups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1839, at the outset of the First Anglo-Afghan War, East India Company surgeon and naturalist William Griffith (1810–1845) set out for Afghanistan with the so-called 'Army of the Indus'. That science, empire, and war were inextricably linked in the nineteenth century is widely acknowledged by scholars, as is the way that natural history collecting was dependent on military (and especially naval) infrastructure. However, the everyday practices and negotiations that underpinned collecting in the context of colonial warfare remain less well understood. Here, Griffith's scientific activities—especially the collection of plant and fish specimens—provide an instructive case, constantly circumscribed by his operating within an invading and then occupying army. Tensions frequently emerged between military and scientific objectives, as well as between Griffith and the numerous collectors and assistants he relied on within the army column and occupied territory (including a broker named Abdul Rozak, a series of fishermen, and a mullah at Kandahar). By making a close study of the relationship between military and scientific practice during the First Anglo-Afghan War (later remembered as one of the most notorious 'disasters' in the history of the British Empire), this article demonstrates the intimate linkages between imperial violence and knowledge production in this period. More broadly, an examination of Griffith's collecting practices reveals the way in which imperial geographical and environmental perceptions of Afghanistan were shaped and reified at a crucial moment in its history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With over 100 million humanitarian migrants globally, there is increasing pressure on high-income countries to offer resettlement opportunities. Humanitarian migrants face many challenges during pre-settlement and resettlement. One challenge is food insecurity (FI). The Building a New Life in Australia (BNLA) longitudinal cohort study gathered data from migrating units, that is, a group of humanitarian migrants included on the same visa application (n = 1599). Data were gathered in five annual waves (2013–2018). Data included food security status in four pre-settlement situations and during resettlement. The results of this secondary analysis of BNLA Wave One indicate that FI was highest in refugee camps (71%), followed by bridging visas (30%), community detention (17%), immigration detention (11%), and during early resettlement (9%). During early resettlement, respondents who were male, those from Afghanistan or Iran, and those living in a single person household reported the highest prevalence of FI. An association was found between having spent time on a bridging visa and FI during early resettlement (p < 0.01). This study's results are an important step in understanding the scale of FI and which sub-groups are most vulnerable, so the resources and policies of high-income countries can better meet food security needs during resettlement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To date, approximately 300,000 families including 700,000 children have been affected by the increased and repeated number of deployments in support of the Global War on Terror in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001. The purpose of this review is to discuss the impact of these deployments on family members of active duty and reserve/guard personnel. A search of literature across the years of military conflicts reveals waves of studies emerging after World War II, the Vietnam conflict, Desert Storm/Shield, and now the most recent wars. Study designs most frequently include qualitative exploratory, survey methods, and program evaluations. The field is limited by small scale projects, service- and facility-specific samples, and knowledge extracted from related topics. More research is needed to achieve a more comprehensive understanding across the trajectory of the deployment experience for both service personnel and family members as well as long-term outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lifetime's Army Wives is its most successful serial drama to date, depicting Army families with loved ones deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq. I argue that Army Wives uses marriage to produce gendered propaganda and advance banal militarism. The program achieves verisimilitude and profitability through Lifetime's alliances with the military-industrial complex and thus frames militarism to appeal to viewers historically the most resistant to the military: women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: With nearly 3 million US troops having deployed for Operations Enduring Freedom, Iraqi Freedom, and New Dawn (OEF/OIF/OND) since the conflicts began, an estimated 2 million children have been separated from a parent. This manuscript describes a collaborative project between a state's Veterans Healthcare System, a branch of the American Counseling Association, and a medical university on the OEF/OIF/OND deployment experience. Methods: The project sought to educate school counselors about experiences of OEF/OIF/OND families and learn from their observations as home-front responders in public schools during a 2-day summer workshop. This manuscript describes the framework of the workshop, pre/post evaluation results, and implications for counselors, educators, and supervisors. Findings: School counselors identified childcare and parenting, emotions and behaviors, finances, and barriers to counseling services as challenges for military children and families. Following the workshop, school counselors reported a greater knowledge concerning understanding aspects of outreach for schools and communities in working with veterans and their families. They also reported a better understanding of the impact of war on military families and knowledge of local and state resources for this population. Specifically, attendees felt they could better identify issues and needs of OEF/OIF/OND families with young children, recommend parenting skills to assist these families, and recognize their psychiatric or medical issues. Conclusion: In addressing the mental health disparities of military children experiencing combat-related parental separation, it is important to identify protective environments that could provide prevention interventions for this population. Collaboration between the Department of Defense, Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), and Department of Education could help support military families and a society facing continued conflicts abroad. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Military deaths are often sudden, unanticipated, traumatic, and/or violent in nature and involve the death of a young adult. More than 5,500 service members have died as a result of their service in the wars in Afghanistan (2001) and Iraq (2003) in combat- or non-combat- related incidences. As the death toll continues to rise, service members and their families struggle with the visible and invisible wounds of war. This article explores wartime death, trauma, and bereavement experienced by those survivors affected by service members who have died as a result of their military service in Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) and Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF). It recognizes the circumstantial and cultural factors of the death as well as the grief and trauma experiences of survivors. Resources and suggested interventions of support are highlighted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the mental health status of American troops deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq. The author discusses the history of war zone-related mental health problems, in particular post-traumatic stress syndrome (PTSD), as well as lessons from Vietnam for veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan. The impact of PTSD on physical health and war zone-related PTSD on military dependents is discussed.

Anxious to augment its military strength for practical reasons and as a symbol of national power and prestige, the Afghan government (like those of most Third World nations) looked to external sources. As a result of U.S. reluctance to provide Afghanistan with military assistance, Kabul turned to the Soviet Union after the mid-1950s. Thus started the process of Moscow's politico-military penetration of Afghanistan, which culminated in the Soviet invasion in December 1979 and the reduction of the traditionally neutral central Asian state into a Soviet satellite. This article contends that while "single dependency" on any foreign power in military matters is potentially dangerous for a Third World country, it is especially so when the benefactor is the Soviet Union, which uses military assistance as an effective instrument to gain political influence. In Afghanistan, Moscow pursued a well-coordinated program of infiltrating the armed forces directly, by establishing influence among the Afghan trainees in the USSR and through its advisers in Afghanistan, as well as indirectly, through the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan. Given the geographical contiguity of the USSR, Russia's historic interest in the country, the backward and repressive nature of its society, and Western indifference, military dependency on the Soviet Union was a dangerous and fateful mistake for Afghanistan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A preface to the second edition of the special issue of the "Social Work in Health Care" in 2011 is presented.