Divorce Rates Among Military Families

The military divorce rate went down slightly in 2012, settling at 3.5 percent, according to Pentagon statistics released to Military.com on Tuesday. Military officials and divorce experts are hopeful that the overall rate, which had crept slowly up from 2.6 percent in 2001 to 3.7 percent in 2011, is starting to move downward. Still, researchers are hesitant to call the decrease a real trend until they see it continue for a longer period. “The sense is that things are possibly drifting down,” said Benjamin Karney, a researcher with the RAND Corp. who has studied military divorce. “Interpreting it is a challenge. As much as it would be terrific to say ‘Oh great, we’ve turned a corner,’ it’s really hard to do that in one year.” The divorce rate is measured by comparing the number of married military members at the beginning to the end of the fiscal year while taking into account attrition, new recruits, and new marriages. Between 2011 and 2012, the divorce rate went down slightly in every service among male and female servicemembers of all ranks. Enlisted female soldiers and Marines, however, continue to experience the highest rate of divorce -- 9.4 percent and 9.3 percent respectively. In the Army, the female enlisted divorce rate is more than triple that of enlisted males. Still, those rates are down from the 2011 rates of 9.6 percent in Army and 9.8 percent in the Marine Corps. But the incremental rate change does not necessarily translate into a noticeable day-to-day difference. One divorce attorney in military-rich San Diego said he has not seen any substantial increase or decrease in military divorces over the last 10 to 20 years. It is improving slightly, the entire picture is looking up.

Dropping the Disorder from PTSD

I know I focus a lot on Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome from troops returning from Afghanistan, but there are a growing number of cases being diagnosed from people who are not even related in any way to military service. Trauma that can bring about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder can range from anything like losing a child in a car accident to surviving a kidnapping that you feel you should not have. The disorder is brought on by the feeling that you are the one that should not have made it, or that you were affected by it in any number of ways. Maybe you feel as though you were trapped for any number of times and now you cannot stand tight spaces. Maybe you cannot handle flying after a rocky ride gave you nightmares for years after. Although being in a combat situation is the most likely way you will receive Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, which is not the only way. Studies show that there are over eleven million Americans living with some form of P.T.S.D. today, and that there are more than likely many more than that. With that being said there should probably be more comprehensible ways of treating and diagnosing P.T.S.D. right? Well the answer is that only in recent years have there been enough consensuses amongst the scientific community to actually look heavily into the problem. In my own opinion there should have been a lot more going into it, especially if there are more then eleven million suffering from it.

Dropping the Disorder from PTSD, Maia Szalavitz, Time Magazine, (97) 103

Living with PTSD: One Man's Story

In this article a young man received a lot of injuries in the war in Afghanistan. His shoulder has torn ligaments. His left arm has a major loss of function and nerve damage. There is a chunk of shrapnel in his leg the size of a quarter but despite all of these things, the soldier claims that the worst injury he sustained there was the Post Traumatic Stress from his everyday living. More and more the soldier shies away from large crowds and social events, even to the point where he can no longer stand to be in a crowd longer than a few minutes. Now that there are new regulations on the treatment of the syndrome, the soldier has been receiving help, but cannot help the feeling that the system is failing him in some way. It took more than thirteen months after his return before the military could properly diagnose the soldier with post-traumatic stress syndrome, and even after he was they still refuse to give him the financial aid he requires. Returning to work is difficult for someone with P.T.S.D. Now that he knows what is wrong with him he can start to fix the problem. Unfortunately there is no quick fix or correct cocktail of drugs that will help the soldier carry on, but there is light at the end of the tunnel.

 

Living with PTSD: One man's story. (2011). Safety & Health, 184(6), 64.

Scholarly Journal Response 1

In the scholarly Journal depicting a young man’s struggle with the system’s set in place following his deployment with the Illinois National Guard shows a few of the problem’s that modern soldiers faced in the early years of the war. The Young man, Jeffrey O’Donnell, suffered from undiagnosed PTSD for six months after returning home, even though he had reported his symptoms to the proper channels. His problem’s consisted of heightened awareness, an inability to sleep, and a fear of crowds and physical contact. The case fell through the cracks, with the heavy flow of men and woman coming back with these symptoms there were a lot of cases like this. Jeffrey knew there was something wrong with the feelings he was having, and that they were worse than the normal changes a man has when they come back from war. He sought help from local doctors and found that the problems that he was dealing with were common amongst those who had gone through the same types of things that he had. PTSD is not just a problem with soldiers returning from war but those of rape victims, victims of brutal accidents, and of various tragic circumstances. The help was there, and so was the ability to diagnose the problems these soldiers were coming back with, but the systems needed to diagnose and treat were not set up. Changes have been made now, we have been at war for over twelve years now, but has there been enough said and done in order to effectively prevent the problem from occurring?

Interview

 

What is changed in the regular family setting when one member is in the service? How much of your life is changed in the process of growing up when a parent is constantly in harm’s way, and what changes when they come back? Some of these questions took Anne Kessler a few minutes to sort out, having had her father and husband both be in the service. The vast amount of experiences and stories she had to tell were amazing, and we spent most of the time reminiscing about the old days and how she missed various members of her family. Some of the most interesting answers however weren't even her own stories.

            When I first asked my mother what it was like to be raised in a military family she simply stated “Well that’s a broad question, I guess it had its ups and downs. We moved a lot and had to leave lives that we started in England to start ones in Australia, but I guess it wasn’t so bad. For the most part it was exciting, we had never been to another country before and I was afraid to start a new life, but the idea seemed like a big grand adventure.” She stopped for a moment, though, and when I asked what the down sides were of moving Anne said “Well we left all of our favorite furniture behind. My father couldn’t sell his motorcycle in time so he buried it in a big box and came back for it a year later. I had to leave all of my friends behind on the bases back in England. It was dreadful at times but the idea of moving to Australia was just so romantic that I couldn’t say a word against it.”

            When I asked her if there were any dark times with her father coming home from Korea and then Vietnam, she didn’t even hesitate to say “No, George was a tough old bastard. He was through it all by the time I was born, and my mother wouldn’t have put up with the drinking just like I don’t either. Things were hard but it was always just because money was tight. Your uncle moved out when I was thirteen and even that argument was gone.” She seemed pretty satisfied with her answer, until her face lit up with “But there are some horror stories. Back then there were no diagnoses of PTSD or the like, so they just accredited the way a person was acting to depression. They drugged em up, and acted surprised when they committed suicide or ran off with another woman destroying their families. Worst case scenario they killed someone. A friend of mine’s father actually went on a car robbery spree, started in Perth and ended in Sydney. He was a decorated war veteran, and got off easy, but still, what would have driven a man to act such a way, especially a man with three degrees. One of them was in psychology!”

            A lot of the stories she told me were more interesting than anything worth mentioning. The things she said were just like everyone else who grew up like us, if our parent wasn’t the one doing it, then we knew someone whose parent had. This relization was sad but true, and we thank god there ware ways to help the soldiers better now.

Community exploration

I grew up in a military family. My parents as well grew up in this environment, and knew all the warning signs themselves, so we managed to stay relatively healthy mentally and physically. My dad was the one deployed all the time. My mom was in the Royal Air Force, but retired long before my oldest brother was born. My father was took off for a year at a time, and then was home for a year, so he was home as much as he was away, but this never stopped him from being a good parent. He knew the troubles some of the other guys were having at home, and was determined to not have the same issues sprout up at his home. He kept us in line growing up, and taught us responsibility and respect. My mother spoiled us rotten but kept us in line, so we had a pretty balanced out childhood. Some kids I knew from base were in broken families who never really learned to function on their own. I know a few kids I grew up around addicted to pain killers, heroin, meth, or worse. Most of those families had divorced parents, cheating on each other and using the kids as pawns to tug at each other’s heart strings and leave them twisting in the wind. That, I am told isn’t even the worst of it. Apparently the worst of the feelings are those when a parent talks bad about the other parent to the child, weather is be that they are divorced or still together. My parents were old fashioned so I didn’t have to deal with a lot of this. I heard the stories, however, and they were not good. I can relate to some of those problems, but I find myself reluctant to talk about them. They aren’t nearly as measurable to the things the others went through, but I do understand that problems like that manifest in other ways.

            My life has been sheltered from a lot of problems that I should have gone through, but I do understand them nonetheless. I intend to explore these issues in the next few months from my first-hand accounts and the second hand descriptions given to me by people, who have lived that way, lived the absolute worst case scenario of my community. These problems are worse than they should be, and I will also explore other options in fixing these issues. There are lots of social institutions set up to help soldiers and their families through these hard times, but most times the soldiers do not want to seek out this help through fear that they will appear weak. If they do go to these support groups or social work they run the risks of being put on report and have their active duty status taken away. There is nothing worse to a soldier who wants to keep working then the idea of being put behind a desk.

Return

In my second article it covered the return of a soldier who had been killed in action. Needless to say it evoked the usual emotions and called for patriotism among even the biggest communists among us. The boy was young, nineteen, the same age as me. He wanted his combat wings and got them. He was killed by a cowardly enemy who hides and buries their weapons in the side of the road. The article was well written and did everything extremely tasteful. I was pleased with it, especially because the reporter was with the French foreign Associated Press. They aren’t always known for their favoritism of the American Imperialist. The family was crying, there were plenty of tears from onlookers, but they were not directly affected by the death. They wouldn’t be burdened by the loss of their loved one. In many cases like these the funeral is huge, and this was no acceptation. People flocked for miles to pay their respects to the young man who had lost his life in such a horrible way. I realized the feeling of obligation when you go. You feel like you have to go, in order to pay some debt to the poor man. After the funeral the family was interviewed and they really didn’t want the big funeral, they just wanted to deal with the issue privately.

             This story demonstrates the impact on a community that the death of a soldier has. Imagine walking around at seven knowing that there is a possibility that your father or mother isn’t coming home.