Building Psychological Resilience In Military Personnel

In this book, authors investigate the concept of resilience, and evaluate existing programs for developing and maintaining resilience that have been implemented in various branches of our armed forces.

As U.S. service members deploy for extended periods on a repeated basis, their ability to cope with the stress of deployment may be challenged. Many programs are available to encourage and support psychological resilience among service members and families. However, little is known about these programs' effectiveness. This report reviews resilience literature and programs to identify evidence-informed factors for promoting resilience.

In an era of longer hours and shorter contracts, of tighter margins and frequent organizational change, stress can undermine both the mental health and performance of employees. A culture of resilience in the workplace, however, offers the potential to support psychological wellbeing and improve the performance of both people and organizations. This is the first book to provide managers with a guide to fostering psychological resilience within their teams. It synthesises not only the latest cutting-edge research in the area, but also translates this into practical advice for a range of organizational settings. Chapters cover the following important issues: Key personality factors related to resilience How job design and routines can improve employee resilience How to build a resilient team Communicating change and improving teamwork Modelling resilient thinking and behaviour as a leader Selecting the right resilience training for your organisation This is the ideal book for anyone interested in fostering a high-performance and emotionally resilient workforce, whether they are a manager, HR professional or occupational psychologist. Its cutting edge approach will also make it important reading for students and researchers of organizational and occupational psychology.

The Psychological Resilience Treatment Manual (PRTM) provides mental health professionals with an evidence-based guide to psychological resilience treatment designed to equip clients with a toolbox of adaptive coping strategies. This intervention treatment manual is for practitioners working with clients to develop resilience and the skills they need to cope with daily challenges, reduce stress levels, and increase general well-being without necessarily diagnosing a specific disorder, such as anxiety or depression. The manual is structured around four guided intervention modules: Passive Coping, Self-Care Behaviour, Social Support, and Active Coping. Each module encompasses four one-hour sessions and includes a contents framework, overview, and target objectives for each session. The manual includes 16 client worksheets that correspond to each session, and relapse prevention therapy is incorporated at the end of each module. Flexible in nature, the manual can be used by practitioners in its entirety or modules can be selected as appropriate, depending on a client’s needs. The Psychological Resilience Treatment Manual is an essential resource for qualified and registered psychologists, qualified cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) practitioners, psychiatrists, and postgraduate counselling psychology students.

Most leaders in the Department of Defense (DoD) agree that family resilience is an important construct, yet DoD does not have a standard definition. The authors of this report review existing definitions of family resilience and offer a candidate definition for DoD use. They also review models of family resilience, identify key family resilience factors, and make recommendations for how DoD can manage family-resilience programs and policies.

This book addresses mental health treatment for veterans and active military personnel. In addition to examining foundational practices in the sub-field, it contains specifically tailored content concerning the recent collapse of the United States (US) installed Afghanistan government. The book is conscious of the myriad of complex emotions that veterans who fought for the past twenty years may be experiencing. Organized into four parts, the book begins with the foundations of veteran and military mental health culture as patients transition from active duty to veteran status, understand the present stigma and barriers to care and reflect on their deployment experience. Part two delves into the specifics of the healthcare system in which military personnel find themselves at various points in their career, including deployment and returning home. Following this, chapters examine the critically unique conditions found in patients, such as sleep disorders, traumatic brain injury, homelessness, substance abuse, and sexual trauma. The book closes with discussions on veterans and their families that focus on the effects of deployment on a military person’s loved ones and their mental state upon returning home. Timely, socially conscious, and comprehensive, the Clinical Manual on Veteran and Military Mental Health is an invaluable resource for mental health professionals receiving new military personnel patients and who have seen a significant shift in their patients due to recent events.