The Psychosocial Effects of Deployment on Military Children

Army parents with deployed spouses reported on the psychosocial functioning of their elementary school aged children using standardized psychosocial health and stress measures. The results were compared to a national sample, and used to identify potential predictors of those children at “high risk” for psychosocial morbidity during wartime deployment of a parent. Analysis of parent reports suggests that children with a deployed parent had significantly higher levels of psychosocial difficulties, and that caregiving parents had more parenting stress and overall life stress than a comparable national sample.