Military spouses transition too! A call to action to address spouses’ military to civilian transition

ABSTRACT

Military to Civilian Transition (MCT) is the process experienced by military personnel as they leave service and return to civilian life. This MCT process is thought to be challenging across a range of key areas such as employment, health, and community integration. Transitioning military personnel are offered various supports, trainings, and programs to assist them through the process to achieve successful transition to civilian life. However, despite the fact that a vast majority of transitioning veterans are either married or in a long-term relationship, similar support is not provided to the veteran spouse who simultaneously transitions with the exiting veteran. Moreover, due to a dearth of research investigating veteran spouses, their experiences are not well understood. This conceptual paper is a call to action for research to be conducted to investigate veteran spouses’ experiences as they transition to civilian life alongside their veteran and for an increase in tailored and targeted services to be available for these often forgotten, yet crucial, partners in MCT.

KEYWORDS:

• Veteran spouses
• military spouses
• military families
• military to civilian transition

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ We use “military spouses” and “civilian spouses” subsequently throughout to refer to spouses married to a military member or to a civilian respectively, and “veteran spouses” to refer to the spouse/partners of military members who have now left service.