Family Resilience in the Military: Definitions, Models, and Policies

Abstract

Military life presents a variety of challenges to military families, including frequent separations and relocations as well as the risks that service members face during deployment; however, many families successfully navigate these challenges. Despite a recent emphasis on family resilience, the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) does not have a standard and universally accepted definition of family resilience. A standard definition is a necessary for DoD to more effectively assess its efforts to sustain and improve family resilience. RAND authors reviewed the literature on family resilience and, in this report, recommend a definition that could be used DoD-wide. The authors also reviewed DoD policies related to family resilience, reviewed models that describe family resilience and identified key family resilience factors, and developed several recommendations for how family-resilience programs and policies could be managed across DoD.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jan 01, 2015
Accession Number
ADA621553

Entities

People

  • Daniela Golinelli
  • Karen C. Osilla
  • Kirby Bowling
  • Laurie T. Martin
  • Lisa S. Meredith
  • Megan K. Beckett
  • Michael P. Fisher
  • Sarah O. Meadows

Organizations

  • RAND Corporation

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Biomedical

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Brain Injuries
  • Department Of Defense
  • Families (Human)
  • Health Services
  • Medical Personnel
  • Military Families
  • Military Personnel
  • Organizational Structure
  • Psychiatry
  • Psychological Adaptation
  • Psychological Phenomena And Processes
  • Psychology
  • Recreation
  • Resilience
  • Social Psychology
  • Unified Combatant Commands
  • Warfare

Fields of Study

  • Medicine

Readers

  • Aerospace Engineering.
  • Defense Acquisition Program Management
  • Housing Policy Studies in Military Families with Privatization and Telomerase Allowance Units, Multi-Family Housing, and Telomere Lengths.