Coping and Mental Health Differences among Active Duty Service Members and Their Spouses with High and Low Levels of Marital Warmth

ABSTRACT

This study examined the relationship between marital warmth (e.g., openly expressing affection, supportive behaviors) and assessments of coping (i.e., challenges coping with military life and self-efficacy in the context of stress) and mental health (i.e., depressive symptoms and anxiety symptoms) in a sample of active duty men and their spouses/romantic partners (N = 234 military couples). Results from a series of multivariate analysis of variance tests indicate that service members and spouses who reported higher levels of marital warmth also reported better coping skills and mental health compared to individuals in couple relationships that demonstrated lower levels of marital warmth. Intervention and prevention implications targeting social support and marital warmth are provided.

KEYWORDS:

• Coping
• mental health
• military couples
• marital warmth
• military spouses

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Public significance statement

This study found that “warm” marital interactions characterized by displays of affection and appreciation toward ones’ partner were related to higher levels of coping and self-efficacy and lower levels of depressive symptoms and anxiety symptoms among military couples in both the active duty member and their civilian spouse/partner. Findings indicate that when working with military affiliated individuals on promoting well-being, helping professionals should take into consideration the role of healthy marital behaviors, particularly displays of warmth.

Notes

1. An EFA was conducted to provide empirical evidence for the content and structural validity of the marital warmth measure. For both service members and their spouses, the results revealed that all of the items loaded onto a single factor and explained a substantial amount of the variance (i.e., service members = 61.34%; spouses of service members = 60.90%).

Additional information

Funding

Funding for this research was supported by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Institute of Food and Agriculture: Hatch project 1017588 [Mallory Lucier-Greer, Principal Investigator] and NIFA award No. 2009-48680-06069 [Jay A. Mancini, Principal Investigator].