The Resilient Spouse: Understanding Factors Associated With Dispositional Resilience Among Military Spouses

Abstract

Spouses of soldiers face several unique challenges due to the demands of being in the military, such as frequent moves, and multiple family separations due to trainings and deployments. Although the military has several programs targeted to enhance spouse resilience, no research has examined the characteristics associated with dispositional (trait) resilience in military spouses or the extent to which trait resilience predicts health outcomes. Anonymous, cross-sectional survey data were collected from a sample of military spouses (n = 333) as part of the Land Combat Study. Survey items asked about dispositional resilience, mental health and well-being, as well as other psychosocial and demographic factors potentially associated with resilience. Characteristics associated with higher resilience included having more children, being a nonminority, social support, less work–family conflict, and better soldier mental health. Trait resilience also predicted several health outcomes including general psychological distress, relationship functioning, sleep quality, and overall health. Notably, the number of soldier deployments was not associated with resilience. Findings suggest these factors are important to the resilience of military spouses and can be used direct future resilience training efforts towards factors that most affect resilience among the population.

Keywords:

• Military spouse
• resilience
• behavioral health
• reintegration training
• deployment

Disclosure statement

Material has been reviewed by the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research. Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command, Silver Spring, MD 20910. There is no objection to its presentation and/or publication. The opinions or assertions contained herein are the private views of the authors, and are not to be construed as official, or as reflecting true views of the Department of the Army or the Department of Defense. The investigators have adhered to the policies for protection of human subjects as prescribed in AR 70–25.

Notes

1 In addition to the analyses predicting general distress, we also conducted separate regression analyses predicting depression, anxiety and PTSD. The results for resilience predicted the general distress measure (β = −.30, p < .01) were very similar to the separate effects for depression, anxiety, and PTSD measures (β = −.28, −.28, and −.27, respectively, all p < .01). There were some differences in the relationship of the other variables modeled with the separate mental health outcomes. These findings are available from the first author upon request.

Additional information

Funding

Funding for this project came from the Military Operational Medicine Research Area Directorate, U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command, Ft. Detrick, MD.