Military Stress And Performance

People comprise the backbone of any military force. But what happens when the stress of operations becomes overwhelming and those people fail to cope? Stress can have negative consequences for the individual, the organisation, and even for overall combat effectiveness. The Australian Defence Force has spent many years researching how to maximise individual resilience and performance in the face of extreme stress. For the first time this wealth of knowledge and experience has been brought together in one volume. This work examines the impact of highly stressful events, such as combat and peacekeeping operations, on individual troops and leaders, with a particular focus on factors that build resilience and maximise performance under stress. Managing stress is an important issue not only for the military, but equally for other high-risk professions such as the police and emergency services. This work provides a unique synthesis of a wide range of research, and clinical and personal experience, providing a coherent, integrated approach to the subject. Of particular use to mental health professionals, it will also be of interest to general readers of military and psychology books.

"The literature on the relationship between stress and performance is extensive and diverse. The question of how stress affects performance is a relevant one given the nature of today's security environment and the challenges faced by military personnel on frequent and long deployments. As a tool for military planners and trainers to better prepare and support personnel, this review examines and summarizes existing studies on how stress affects performance and how these effects can be controlled and applied to the military context. The studies reviewed are representative and include those relevant to the military context, but the review itself is not comprehensive. Stress is defined as a nonspecific response of the body to a stimulus or event (stressor) . Under a general model of the stress response, when an individual experiences a stressor, the stressor will lead to a physiological response, one that can be measured by several indicators, such as elevated heart rate. In related literature, the term "stress" is used to refer to this physiological response. Stressors vary in form and can include extreme temperature or lighting, time pressure, lack of sleep, and exposure to threat or danger, among others. All stressors, however, tend to produce similar physiological responses within the body (Selye, 1956). In a military context, we are particularly interested in deployment-related stressors, including those related to peacekeeping operations and hostile fire missions as well as those associated with extended family separation. Stressors involved in peacekeeping and combat operations overlap, but they are also somewhat distinct. Some of the most significant stressors associated with both types of deployments are uncertainty, long work hours, risk of death or disease, boredom, and separation from family (Halverson et al., 1995; Campbell et al., 1998)."--Summary.

This volume examines the causes and consequences of stress in the military, focussing on how stress and well-being shape the experiences of military personnel both in and out of the combat zone.

The world is a dangerous place and recent events have served to make it less safe. There are many arenas of conflict and even combat across the world. Such situations are the quintessential expression of stress; you stand in imminent danger and live with the knowledge that you may be attacked, injured or even killed at any moment. How do people perform under these conditions? How do they keep a heightened level of vigilance when nothing may happen in their immediate location for weeks or even months? What happens when the bullets actually start flying? How is it you distinguish friend from foe, and each from innocent bystanders when in immediate peril of your life? Can we design technology to help people make good decisions in these ultimately hazardous situations? To what degree does your membership in a team act to dissipate these particular effects? Can we generate sufficiently stressful field exercises to simulate these conditions and can we train and/or select those most able to withstand such adverse conditions? How will the next generation of servicemen deal with these inherent problems? These are the sorts of questions that Performance Under Stress addresses. This book is derived largely from a multiple-year, multiple university initiative (MURI) on stress and soldier performance on the modern, electronic battlefield. It involved leading researchers from many institutions who have brought their individual expertise to bear on these crucial, contemporary concerns. United by a common research framework, these groups attacked the issue from different methodological and conceptual approaches, ranging from traditional laboratory modeling and experimentation, to realistic simulations; from involved field exercises to personal experiences of actual combat conditions. The insights generated have been distilled and presented as a benchmark of current understanding and provide future directions for research in this arena. Although this work focuses on soldier stress and soldier performance, the principles that are derived extend well beyond this single application. Their findings can be applied to people facing the demands of the business world or research as much as to those who meet life or death situations, such as homeland security, first responders, and law enforcement personnel.

The pace of life in our high technology world has quickened. Industries that do not become more efficient, often by requiring a faster production turnaround with less slack, are superseded. Because of this, workers face an environment in which they must perform under more time pressure and under greater task load, in which stress is more prevalent, and in which consequences of poor performance are more critical than ever before. The dominant, if unstated, psychoanalytic paradigm underlying much stress research over the past fifty years has led to an emphasis on coping and defense mechanisms and to a preoccupation with disordered behavior and illness. Accordingly, almost any book with "stress" in the title will invariably devote a considerable amount of pages to topics such as stress-related disorders, clinical interventions, stress and coping, psychopathology, illness, and health issues. This book presents basic and applied research that addresses the effects of acute stress on performance. There are a large number of applied settings that share the commonalities of high demand, high risk performance conditions, including aviation; military operations; nuclear, chemical, and other industrial settings; emergency medicine; mining; firefighting; and police work, as well as everyday settings in which individuals face stressors such as noise, time pressure, and high task load. This book focuses directly on the effects of acute stress-- defined as intense, novel stress of limited duration--on performance. The effects of stress on task performance, decision making, and team interaction are discussed, as well as the interventions used to overcome them.

This timely, well-organized, and practical guide for the warfighter offers the collaborative contributions of dedicated military and civilian experts. Each chapter examines specific demands of military life and service, such as nutrition and its role in physical and cognitive performance, including details about military rations like Meals Ready to Eat (MREs). It also explores sleep: why you need it, how much you need, what happens when you are deprived of it, and how to recognize deprivation’s effects. The authors also discuss various aspects of stress: what it is, what its effects are on your body and mind, and how to recognize it, prevent it, and handle it. The book devotes an extensive discussion to hardiness and resilience, focusing on preparing yourself and your family and friends for stressful military deployments in order to avoid or minimize their associated pressures. Finally, the authors address common problems experienced after a deployment and offer tips on how to make your transition back home as smooth as possible for yourself and your family. In each case, the expert contributors have emphasized specific skills, strategies, behavior, and support measures that you can apply to benefit your own overall psychological health, performance, and longevity.

There are many stressors associated with military life, particularly with deployments, and it is important to understand how such stressors affect individual functioning and performance. This report reviews literature on how stress affects performance generally and applies the most relevant findings to military operations and training.