Using Cognitive Behavioral Interventions to Help Children Cope with Parental Military Deployments

Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are associated with more deployments than in previous years. Recent estimates show 1.2 million
school children have a parent that is serving in the active military. Family stress increases proportionately to the length
of deployment and the perception of danger. In a recent study, twenty percent of children whose parent was being deployed
were identified as “high risk” for psychosocial disturbances. A deployed parent represents a stressor reflecting ambiguous
loss which prompts emotional distress. Cognitive behaviorally based prevention and intervention efforts have shown considerable
promise with children experiencing a variety of disorders who do not necessarily have a deployed parent. For instance the
Penn Resiliency Program has enjoyed considerable empirical support. It seems quite reasonable that these favorable results
would generalize to a population of military children. This paper will briefly review the extant literature on the effects
of parental deployment on children’s emotional well-being and then recommend a variety of cognitive behavioral interventions
to enhance their psychological welfare.