Abstract
Recent studies have confirmed that repeated wartime deployment of a parent exacts a toll on military children and families
and that the quality and functionality of familial relations is linked to force preservation and readiness. As a result, family-centered
care has increasingly become a priority across the military health system. FOCUS (Families OverComing Under Stress), a family-centered,
resilience-enhancing program developed by a team at UCLA and Harvard Schools of Medicine, is a primary initiative in this
movement. In a large-scale implementation project initiated by the Bureau of Navy Medicine, FOCUS has been delivered to thousands
of Navy, Marine, Navy Special Warfare, Army, and Air Force families since 2008. This article describes the theoretical and
empirical foundation and rationale for FOCUS, which is rooted in a broad conception of family resilience. We review the literature
on family resilience, noting that an important next step in building a clinically useful theory of family resilience is to
move beyond developing broad “shopping lists” of risk indicators by proposing specific mechanisms of risk and resilience.
Based on the literature, we propose five primary risk mechanisms for military families and common negative “chain reaction”
pathways through which they undermine the resilience of families contending with wartime deployments and parental injury.
In addition, we propose specific mechanisms that mobilize and enhance resilience in military families and that comprise central
features of the FOCUS Program. We describe these resilience-enhancing mechanisms in detail, followed by a discussion of the
ways in which evaluation data from the program’s first 2 years of operation supports the proposed model and the specified
mechanisms of action.
and that the quality and functionality of familial relations is linked to force preservation and readiness. As a result, family-centered
care has increasingly become a priority across the military health system. FOCUS (Families OverComing Under Stress), a family-centered,
resilience-enhancing program developed by a team at UCLA and Harvard Schools of Medicine, is a primary initiative in this
movement. In a large-scale implementation project initiated by the Bureau of Navy Medicine, FOCUS has been delivered to thousands
of Navy, Marine, Navy Special Warfare, Army, and Air Force families since 2008. This article describes the theoretical and
empirical foundation and rationale for FOCUS, which is rooted in a broad conception of family resilience. We review the literature
on family resilience, noting that an important next step in building a clinically useful theory of family resilience is to
move beyond developing broad “shopping lists” of risk indicators by proposing specific mechanisms of risk and resilience.
Based on the literature, we propose five primary risk mechanisms for military families and common negative “chain reaction”
pathways through which they undermine the resilience of families contending with wartime deployments and parental injury.
In addition, we propose specific mechanisms that mobilize and enhance resilience in military families and that comprise central
features of the FOCUS Program. We describe these resilience-enhancing mechanisms in detail, followed by a discussion of the
ways in which evaluation data from the program’s first 2 years of operation supports the proposed model and the specified
mechanisms of action.
- Content Type Journal Article
- Pages 1-18
- DOI 10.1007/s10567-011-0096-1
- Authors
- William R. Saltzman, UCLA Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior and California State University, Long Beach, CA, USA
- Patricia Lester, UCLA Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, Los Angeles, CA, USA
- William R. Beardslee, Children’s Hospital Boston, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA
- Christopher M. Layne, UCLA/Duke National Center for Child Traumatic Stress, Los Angeles, CA, USA
- Kirsten Woodward, United States Bureau of Navy Medicine and Surgery, Washington, DC, USA
- William P. Nash, Defense Centers of Excellence for Psychological Health and TBI, Silver Spring, MD, USA
- Journal Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review
- Online ISSN 1573-2827
- Print ISSN 1096-4037