Publications

Information about selected journal articles, papers, and other documents authored or formally reviewed by MFRI researchers and other staff:

PTSD service dogs foster resilience among veterans and military families (2021)

“Military deployment and reintegration challenges permeate the lives and relationships of Veterans, their spouses, and their families. Among these challenges, 23% of post-9/11 Veterans have been diagnosed with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Psychiatric service dogs have been found to help clinically alleviate PTSD symptoms when used as a complementary intervention.”  

Youth’s sibling relationships across the course of a parent’s military deployment: Trajectories and implications (2020)

parents’ perceptions of youth’s sibling relationships across the course of a parent’s military deployment. Participants included 109 families with at least two siblings (older sibling and younger siblings age: M = 10.85, SD = 3.92 and M = 7.89, SD = 3.58, respectively) and one parent serving in the National Guard. Data were collected via in-home interviews, at six time points across the deployment cycle.”

Continuity in psychological health and role functioning across deployment (2020)

“Scholars have described military deployments as one of the most stressful aspects of life for military couples. Deployment affects multiple roles and family members, yet little is known about the degree to which postdeployment outcomes are accounted for by predeployment functioning independent of deployment experiences.”

Ultra-rapid development and deployment of a family resilience program during the COVID-19 pandemic: Lessons learned from Families Tackling Tough Times Together (2020)

“The 2020 COVID-19 pandemic brought uncertainty, anxiety, and stress into households; however, it also created an opportunity as many families, sequestered at home, found themselves spending much more time together. To support families and improve their ability to cope, recover, and build resilience amid the pandemic, Purdue University’s College of Health and Human Sciences (HHS) launched Families Tackling Tough Times Together (FT), a strength-based multi-week online program informed by scientific evidence about family resilience.”

A longitudinal examination of couple communication and role negotiations following a military deployment (2020)

“Across deployment cycles, individuals negotiate family roles to accommodate the absence then re-entry of service members. There is scant empirical evidence about the processes through which roles are reorganized. Guided by the family resilience framework (Walsh, 2016) and the model of military marriage (Karney & Crown, 2007), I hypothesized that communication would be a mechanism through which couples negotiated roles during reintegration.”

Re-specifying adolescent non-normative role behavior experiences with military deployment (2020)

“The ideal that youth carry out roles and responsibilities in their families appears age old. There are some family socio-cultural contexts that are said to destabilize the patterns of interactions that govern a family system, engendering an inappropriate overlap in sub-systems creating opportunities for youth to perform caregiving activities traditionally meant for other members of the family unit (Minuchin, 1974).”

Female U.S. military veterans’ (non)disclosure of mental health issues with family and friends: Privacy rules and boundary management (2019)

“Grounded in communication privacy management (CPM) theory, this study explores the criteria female U.S. military veterans rely on when creating privacy rules regarding (non)disclosure of their mental health information with others as well as how female veterans manage privacy boundaries. Interviews with a diverse sample of 78 female veterans recently diagnosed with PTSD revealed examples of all five criteria for privacy rules proposed by CPM theory and illustrate how factors such as military culture, trauma, and risk/benefit assessments are interconnected.”

Continuity in psychological health and role functioning across deployment (2019)

“Scholars have described military deployments as one of the most stressful aspects of life for military couples. Deployment affects multiple roles and family members, yet little is known about the degree to which postdeployment outcomes are accounted for by predeployment functioning independent of deployment experiences.”