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The association between alcohol use and substantiated incidents of nonmutual and mutual domestic violence between U.S. Army enlisted soldiers and their spouses was examined for the period 1998-2004. Maltreatment was always more severe in nonmutual incidents. Female victims experienced more severe maltreatment than males. Male offenders and victims were more likely to be drinking than females. For victims of both sexes, severity was greater when offenders were drinking. Older males were more likely to be offenders in nonmutual incidents. White males were more likely than Black or Hispanic males to be offenders in nonmutual incidents. There is a need for both domestic violence and alcohol treatment programs to focus on the increased risk of abuse when alcohol is involved. Keywords: army; domestic violence; alcohol; epidemiology; mutual abuse; non-mutual abuse

The pattern and severity of substantiated mutual and nonmutual spouse abuse between U.S. Army enlisted personnel and their spouses was determined for 1998 to 2002. The number of nonmutual and mutual abuse victims was equal in 1998, but by 2002 there were about twice as many non mutual as mutual victims. The rate per thousand of mutual abuse decreased by 58% while that of nonmutual abuse decreased by 13%. The rate per thousand of female victims was always greater than male victims for non-mutual abuse and the severity of abuse of female victims was always more severe than male victims. The active duty female had the highest risk of becoming a victim. These patterns of mutual and nonmutual domestic abuse in the U.S. Army suggest that prevention and educational approaches could be developed that would be useful to prevention specialists and to clinicians as the Army pursues avenues to reduce domestic violence.

Aggression by a random sample of female soldiers (N = 1,185) toward their employed (n = 840) and unemployed (n = 345) civilian husbands was measured by the Conflict Tactics Scale. When age, race, rank, years married, and the number of previous marriages were held constant, severe aggression toward unemployed male spouses was significantly greater than toward employed spouses.

In a study of 31,801 active-duty Army military men and women, the authors encountered protocols in which moderate or severe Conflict Tactics Scale (CTS) items had been omitted. Dropping respondents who omit items could introduce biases into the data. We investigated the hypothesis that those respondents who omitted an item differed in aggression from those who omitted none and hence should not be dropped from the analysis without further consideration. We tested this by means of three comparisons of those who omitted one item and those who omitted none: classification of respondents into no aggression, moderate aggression, and severe aggression; differences between mean CTS scores; and comparison of one-time aggressors with those who reported more than one incident in a year. All three methods indicated that the group that omitted one item was more aggressive than the group that omitted none.

Objective: To examine trends by year in reports of victims of child maltreatment in the US Army Central Registry (ACR) during the period 1975-97. We report the rates/1,000 children of Army families of initial substantiated cases from 1988-97 and the number of cases of maltreatment as a percentage of total victims for each year from 1975-97. Army data are compared to published reports from military service child abuse registries. Methods: Numbers of cases of child maltreatment for each year were obtained from the ACR for major, minor, and total physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, and neglect. Population figures for numbers of children were obtained from the Defense Manpower Data Center. Results: The rates/1,000 for neglect have decreased by 24% from 1991-97, although the decrease has not been steady. The rates/1,000 of minor physical abuse declined 28% from 1993-97. The rates/1,000 of major physical abuse were basically unchanged from 1988-96, although the highest rate was recorded in 1997. The rates/1,000 of sexual abuse were also basically unchanged with the exception of increases in 1992-94 after which time the rates/1,000 returned to the pre-1992 levels. The rates/1,000 of emotional abuse cases more than doubled from 1988-97. Conclusions: While minor physical abuse and neglect have shown decreases over the past decade, major physical abuse has remained virtually unchanged and sexual and emotional abuse have shown fluctuations. All these forms of maltreatment are challenges to the Army Family Advocacy Program. Key Words - Child abuse, Child neglect, Military family advocacy, Epidemiology, Physical abuse, Sexual abuse, Emotional abuse.

Better understanding of the causes and circumstances of maltreatment deaths of children is needed to prevent tragedy. The purpose of this article is to facilitate understanding of child maltreatment fatality review processes and their outcomes. A literature review was conducted through searches of the databases PubMed, PsycINFO, and EMBASE and through citations in publications. Over 165 publications were reviewed and 55 were selected for inclusion. Papers were from the United States, England, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Netherlands, France, Canada, Australia, South Africa, Switzerland, Saudi Arabia, Japan, and China. These were included if they described fatality review goals, authority, procedures, and outcomes. Although we searched databases on a continual basis during the preparation of this review, we could have missed publications, particularly those in newspapers and journals that are not included in large-scale databases or cited in other articles. Improvement of fatality review requires diligence by individuals and organizations that provide information to the reviewers. Among challenges to the review process are varying criteria for review, misclassifications of the manner of death, inadequate or incomplete forensic and medical investigations, lack of information about the perpetrator, diversity of the community, concealment of the cause of death by parents or other caregivers, and disagreement among reviewers about the results of their inquiries. Institutional challenges are also present, which include the need for funding, privacy issues on obtaining information, updating reviewer training, lack of follow-up by institutional authorities on the recommendations of the reviews, and research facilitating the review of maltreatment fatalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Preparation for the opening of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., in April 1993, exposed workers to potentially disturbing personal artifacts of Holocaust victims and other reminders of the horrors of the Holocaust. The process of psychological consultation is described, and the resultant approaches to interventions designed to lower distress among museum workers and volunteers are discussed.

Interviews with and observations of experienced and inexperienced personnel were conducted to determine their coping strategies before, during, and after their work with the bodies of people who had died violently. Avoidance, denial, and social support from the work group and spouse appeared to facilitate coping. The implications of these findings for therapeutic intervention are discussed.

The psychological responses of two groups of fire fighters were examined following the performance of rescue work. Four types of responses were reported: identification with the victims, feelings of helplessness and guilt, fear of he unknown, and physiological reactions. Stress was found to be mediated by availability of social support, type of leadership, level of training, and use of rituals. Implications of these findings for preventive intervention measures are discussed.

Increases in combat deployments have been associated with rises in rates of child neglect in U.S. military families. Although various types of child neglect have been described in military families, it is unknown whether deployment status is associated with specific types of child neglect and whether other factors, such as substance misuse, play a role. To determine the contribution of service member deployment status to the risk of specific child neglect types, data were collected from 390 substantiated U.S. Army child neglect case files. The contributions of deployment status at the time of the neglect incident and parental alcohol or drug-related misuse to risk of neglect types were examined controlling for military family rank and child age. Compared to never deployed families, families with a service member concurrently deployed at the time of the neglect incident were at higher risk for failure to provide physical needs, lack of supervision, and educational neglect, but at lower risk for emotional neglect. Being previously deployed incurred risk for moral–legal neglect. Substance misuse added risk for moral–legal and educational neglect. Findings indicate the need for tailored prevention strategies to target different periods within the deployment cycle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]