Predictors of not working among treatment-seeking UK veterans: a cross-sectional study

2020 ◽  
pp. bmjmilitary-2020-001412
Author(s):  
Laura Josephine Hendrikx ◽  
J Ross ◽  
C Armour ◽  
D Murphy
Keyword(s):  
At Risk ◽  
Physical Health ◽  
Military Service ◽  
Treatment Seeking ◽  
Post Traumatic Stress ◽  
Contributing Factors ◽  
Civilian Life ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Younger Age ◽  
The Military

IntroductionMany veterans do well reintegrating to civilian life following military service. Yet, many face difficulties in finding and securing work. Veterans are more likely than civilians to experience work difficulties, but there remains little research investigating contributing factors, particularly among samples of treatment-seeking veterans. As such, the study examines predictors of not working among UK treatment-seeking veterans.DesignThe study employed a cross-sectional design.MethodsOf 667 treatment-seeking UK veterans, 403 (Mage=50.94) provided information on a range of demographic variables, military-related experiences, the total number of physical health conditions and mental health outcomes. Work status was categorised as not working due to illness (Mage=48.15), not working due to other reasons (Mage=61.92) and currently working (Mage= 46.13).ResultsPrevalence rates of not working was 69%. Not working was predicted by a greater number of physical health problems as well as more years since leaving the military. Not working due to poor health was independently predicted by symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and younger age, while not working due to other reasons was predicted by older age.ConclusionsThe study revealed that treatment-seeking veterans of younger age with a high number of physical health difficulties, symptoms of PTSD and more years since leaving the military are most at risk of not working due to ill health. The findings have important implications for identifying veterans most at risk of not working and offer the opportunity to tailor rehabilitation programmes to promote successful veteran reintegration into civilian life.

Contribution of mental ill health during military service to postservice benefit claims in the UK

2021 ◽  
pp. oemed-2020-107050
Author(s):  
Howard Burdett ◽  
Nicola T Fear ◽  
Simon Wessely ◽  
Neil Greenberg ◽  
Roberto J Rona
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Military Service ◽  
Mental Health Problems ◽  
Common Mental Disorder ◽  
Population Attributable Fraction ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Post Traumatic Stress ◽  
Civilian Life ◽  
Carry Over ◽  
The Uk

ObjectivesWhile most UK military personnel transition successfully into civilian life, some experience unemployment and disability, which may be partly attributable to in-service factors. This study aims to determine the degree to which in-service mental health problems impact on postservice benefit claims.MethodsUsing data from a cohort of 5598 recent leavers from regular service in the UK Armed Forces linked with data from the Department for Work and Pensions, we assessed associations between in-service mental health and postservice benefit claims, and the population attributable fraction (PAF) of benefit claims related to in-service mental health. An analysis with postservice mental ill health as mediator was performed to determine the degree to which the observed effects were a consequence of persistent illness, as opposed to remitted.ResultsMental illness occurring in-service predicted both unemployment and disability claims, partly mediated by postservice health (23%–52% total effects mediated), but alcohol misuse did not. Common mental disorder (CMD) (PAF 0.07, 95% CI: 0.02 to 0.11) and probable post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) (PAF 0.05, 95% CI 0.01 to 0.09) contributed to unemployment claims. Probable PTSD was the largest contributor to disability claims (PAF 0.25, 95% CI 0.13 to 0.36), with a smaller contribution from CMD (PAF 0.16, 95% CI 0.03 to 0.27).ConclusionsIn-service mental ill health gives rise to benefit claims. These effects are only partly mediated by postservice mental health, implying that in-service (or pre-service) mental issues have carry-over effects into civilian life even if remitted. Better prevention and treatment of in-service PTSD symptoms may well reduce postservice disability claims.

Military Service and Lifetime Arrests: Examining the Effects of the Total Military Experience on Arrests in a Sample of Prison Inmates

2015 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-44 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erika J. Brooke ◽  
Jacinta M. Gau
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Military Service ◽  
Prison Inmates ◽  
Civilian Life ◽  
Military Experience ◽  
Entry Length ◽  
Life Trajectories ◽  
Increased Risk ◽  
The Military ◽  
The Impact

Service in the military is an important event that may shape veterans’ life trajectories. Research has shown that military service is associated with increased risk of alcohol and substance abuse, mental illness, and antisocial behaviors, yet it remains unclear whether service places veterans at elevated risk of criminal justice involvement. In addition, most prior research treats military service as a dichotomous variable and does not consider the specific components of the military experience that might affect the impact that service has upon veterans. In the present study, a large sample of state prison inmates is utilized to test for the potential impact of military service, by itself, as well as age of entry, length of service, combat exposure, discharge type, and branch status on lifetime arrests. Results have implications for both military and criminal justice policies in ensuring that veterans have the assistance they need as they re-enter civilian life.

scholarly journals Influence of military identity on social adaptation of Ukrainian veterans

2021 ◽  
Vol 78 (3) ◽  
pp. 54-75
Author(s):  
Е. V. Bataeva ◽  
◽  
A. B. Artemenko ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Military Service ◽  
Social Identification ◽  
Social Adaptation ◽  
Civilian Life ◽  
Combat Experience ◽  
Social Adaptability ◽  
Medium Level ◽  
Positive Assessment ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Military

The article examines the influence of different forms of the military identity of veterans on the degree of their social adaptation. We define “military identity” as a result of the social identity of a service(wo)man with the military due to the internalization of values and norms adopted in the military sphere. A “veteran” is a service(wo)man who served in the army, participated in combat operations, and was demobilized in connection with the end of the term of service or for health reasons, regardless of the types of military forces and military service. We have used a sociological method of measuring the stable, situational, and unformed types of veterans’ military identity based on the following criteria: social identification, the strength of connection with the army, biographical importance of military service, perception of the army as a family, recognition of the individual in the army, existential assessment of military service, the importance of military practices after demobilization, social contacts with former service(wo)men, the positive assessment of the military culture of obedience/discipline. We have studied the influence of the following factors – duration of staying in the combat zone, conscription age, motivation to join the army, marital status, and traumatic combat experience – on the formation of military identity. According to the quota sample, the results of the study “Military identity and social adaptation of Ukrainian veterans” are presented; 400 veterans (n = 400) were interviewed according to the quota sample. We found out that veterans with a stable military identity mainly had a low level of social adaptability to the civilian life; veterans with a situational form of military identity mostly had a medium level of social adaptability; veterans with an unformed type of military identity were the most adapted to the civilian life.

Making military and Veteran women (in)visible: The continuity of gendered experiences in military-to-civilian transition

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maya Eichler
Keyword(s):  
Military Service ◽  
Women Veterans ◽  
Military Women ◽  
Sex And Gender ◽  
Civilian Life ◽  
Gender Biases ◽  
Care And Support ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Set Up ◽  
The Military

LAY SUMMARY This study explores how gender and sex shape the military-to-civilian transition (MCT) for women. Thirty-three Canadian women Veterans were interviewed about their military service and post-military life. MCT research often emphasizes discontinuities between military and civilian life, but women’s accounts highlight continuities in gendered experiences. Military women are expected to fit the male norm and masculine ideal of the military member during service, but they are rarely recognized as Veterans after service. Women experience invisibility as military member and Veterans and simultaneously hypervisibility as (ex)military women who do not fit military or civilian gender norms. Gendered expectations of women as spouses and mothers exert an undue burden on them as serving members and as Veterans undergoing MCT. Women encounter care and support systems set up on the normative assumption of the military and Veteran man supported by a female spouse. The study findings point to a needed re-design of military and Veteran systems to remove sex and gender biases and better respond to the sex- and gender-specific MCT needs of women.

Russian military patriotic education: a control tool against the arbitrariness of veterans

2010 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-85 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elisabeth Sieca-Kozlowski
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Military Service ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Education Programme ◽  
Government Control ◽  
Civilian Life ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Patriotic Education ◽  
Russian Military ◽  
The Military

The military had been concerned about military patriotic education for a long time when Putin's Patriotic Education Programme was published. As soon as the collapse of the Soviet Union occurred, followed a few years later by the creation of the Russian armed forces, they had already been developing patriotic education programmes aimed primarily at youth, aided by veterans of local wars, both volunteers and recruits. The aim of this article is to show that the military version of patriotic education aims openly to encourage military service, and that the Russian state will try to enlist veterans of the Afghanistan and Chechen wars in activities linked to military patriotic education and its spread in military and civilian spheres. Our hypothesis is that the determination to bring veterans together around a common project has two aims: (1) to federate veterans around the authorities and (2) to channel a population that escapes government control and some of whose excesses on their return to civilian life (violence towards the population in the context of their function, for veterans of the Interior Ministry in particular) have darkened the image of the ministries known as the “power” ministries.

scholarly journals Physical Fitness Factor Analysis on Employees at the Fertilizer Company

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 297
Author(s):  
Rizka Dara Nabilah ◽  
Y. Denny Ardyanto
Keyword(s):  
Physical Fitness ◽  
Physical Health ◽  
Sampling Technique ◽  
Simple Random Sampling ◽  
Work Capacity ◽  
Individual Characteristics ◽  
Contributing Factors ◽  
Chi Square ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Exact Test

Introduction: Work capacity is related to the ability required for finishing a job at a certain period, and its performance is influenced by physical fitness. PT Petrokimia Gresik's medical check-up result in 2018 showed that there were only 51% of employees with good physical fitness, 37.8% with average physical fitness, and the other 11.2% was not tested due to illness or was pregnant. The objective of this research was to understand the contributing factors that can affect the physical fitness of the employees that were actively involved in physical exercises in PT Petrokimia Gresik. Method: This research was non-reactive or unobtrusive with cross-sectional research design and conducted in December of 2019. The population was employees that have previously done medical check-up after physical exercise for more than 24 activities with a minimum of 126 km within 3 months amounted to 90 and had 55 samples gathered by using the simple random sampling technique. The independent variables were age, work period, and the frequency of exercise. The dependent variable was the physical fitness calculated by ergocycle during the medical check-up. The data analysis was done descriptively and the correlation test was done by the Chi-Square and Fisher’s Exact Test. Result: In this research, some employees were older than 30 years old (54.5%), male (98.2%), have working period longer than 3 years (65.6%), have normal-day working system (76.4%), performing exercises for at least 3x per week (56.4%), and had a good physical fitness (78.2%). Conclusion: age and working period are the factors related to the physical health of the employees, meanwhile exercising has no connection with the physical health of the employees if it is done without intensity and duration monitoring. Keywords: exercise, individual characteristics, physical fitness

scholarly journals Veterans’ experiences of successfully managing post-traumatic stress disorder

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gemma Parry ◽  
Suzanne Margaret Hodge ◽  
Alan Barrett
Keyword(s):  
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder ◽  
Traumatic Stress ◽  
Stress Disorder ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Post Traumatic Stress ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Civilian Life ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Post Traumatic ◽  
The Military

Purpose Prevalence of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among UK veterans is higher than in the general population. However, prevalence figures do not reflect the complexity of this phenomenon and ways in which it may be bound up with veterans’ experiences of adjusting to civilian life. The purpose of this study is to explore veterans’ experiences of successfully managing PTSD. Design/methodology/approach Semi-structured interviews were conducted with six veterans who had served in the UK armed forces and analysed using interpretative phenomenological analysis. Findings Three themes were developed: accepting the problem, taking responsibility and gaining control; talking to the right people; and strategies, antidotes and circling back around. Managing PTSD appeared to be bound up with veterans’ experience of renegotiating their identity, where positive aspects of identity lost on leaving the military were rebuilt and problematic aspects were challenged. Participants sought to speak about their difficulties with others who understood the military context. They felt that their experiences made them a valuable resource to others, and they connected this with a positive sense of identity and value. Practical implications The findings suggest the importance of wider provision of peer support and education for civilian health services on veterans’ needs. Originality/value This study adds to the understanding of what meaningful recovery from PTSD may involve for veterans, in particular its potential interconnectedness with the process of adjusting to civilian life.

scholarly journals BUILDING CIVIL SOCIETY WITH FORMER MILITARY AND THEIR FAMILIES: THE ROLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION IN BRIDGING THE GAP BETWEEN MILITARY SERVICE AND CIVIL LIFE

2020 ◽  
pp. 110-119
Author(s):  
Mariana HASIAK ◽  
◽  
Maureen P. FLAHERTY ◽  
Nina HAYDUK ◽  
Sofiya STAVKOVA ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Needs Assessment ◽  
Military Service ◽  
Educational Institutions ◽  
Civilian Life ◽  
Key Informants ◽  
Military Members ◽  
The Military

Introduction. While the military is viewed differently in Canada and Ukraine, inclusion of veterans into civil society is important for both countries. Transition from the military service to civilian life can be challenging. Therefore, the role of different institutions and organizations, that focus on trying to improve what is available for former soldiers and their families has to be discussed. The purpose of the article is to explore the role that higher educational institutions can and should play in assisting former military to better integrate into civilian society – civil society. Methods. Researchers conducted a literature review of journal articles and other relevant written materials as well as informal interviews with key informants. Results. Using the mixed methods of literature search, informal interviews with key informants, and observation, the article considers the way “veterans” are conceptualized in both Canada and Ukraine and how two particular universities in Canada and Ukraine now attempt to meet the needs of former military members, wondering how their needs may differ and be similar to other students of higher education. Originality. The article concludes that, since civil society in general has a responsibility to support veterans in their transition, and notes that there are gaps in both understanding of need and awareness/availability of appropriate resources, a full needs assessment is the next step. Conclusion. The authors recommend a pilot needs assessment at the LPNU in Lviv Oblast where a number of veterans have made their homes.

Trauma, identity and mental health in UK military veterans

2010 ◽  
Vol 41 (8) ◽  
pp. 1733-1740 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. R. Brewin ◽  
R. Garnett ◽  
B. Andrews
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Military Service ◽  
Suicide Attempts ◽  
Trauma Exposure ◽  
Identity Change ◽  
Post Traumatic Stress ◽  
Civilian Life ◽  
Military Trauma ◽  
The World ◽  
Negative Perceptions

BackgroundMilitary service can lead to profound changes in identity, both in servicemen's perception of themselves and in their relationship to the world, but the significance of these changes for psychopathology is unclear. We investigated whether the extent and valence of identity change was related to the degree of military trauma exposure or to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and suicide attempts. We further sought to describe the nature of such changes using qualitative analysis.MethodA total of 153 veterans in receipt of a war pension for PTSD or physical disability were identified. Interviews established retrospectively DSM-IV diagnoses of PTSD and reports of suicidal ideation or behaviour since enlistment were examined.ResultsTrauma exposure alone was unrelated to any measure of identity change. By contrast, PTSD was associated with a relationship to the world that had changed in a negative direction. It was also associated with a changed perception of self, which could be either positive or negative. After controlling for trauma exposure and PTSD, suicidal behaviours were associated with more negative perceptions of the world. These perceptions of the world included disillusionment about human nature and a more specific rejection of civilian life.ConclusionsPTSD and suicidal behaviours in veterans seem not to be associated with significantly more negative views of the self but rather with more alienation from civilian life. This has serious consequences for engaging veterans in National Health Service (NHS) mental health services and for the provision of effective treatment.

scholarly journals Thank You for Hearing My Voice – Listening to Women Combat Veterans in the United States and Israeli Militaries

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shir Daphna-Tekoah ◽  
Ayelet Harel-Shalev ◽  
Ilan Harpaz-Rotem
Keyword(s):  
Narrative Analysis ◽  
Military Service ◽  
Military Veterans ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The United States ◽  
Female Veterans ◽  
Civilian Life ◽  
The Military ◽  
Female Soldiers ◽  
Combat Soldiers

The military service of combat soldiers may pose many threats to their well being and often take a toll on body and mind, influencing the physical and emotional make-up of combatants and veterans. The current study aims to enhance our knowledge about the combat experiences and the challenges that female soldiers face both during and after their service. The study is based on qualitative methods and narrative analysis of in-depth semi-structured personal interviews with twenty military veterans. It aims to analyze the narratives of American and Israeli female combat soldiers regarding their military service, with emphasis on the soldiers’ descriptions, in their own words, about their difficulties, challenges, coping and successes during their service and transition to civilian life. A recurring theme in the interviews with the veterans of both militaries was the need to be heard and the fact that societies, therapists, and military institutions do not always truly listen to female veterans’ experiences and are not really interested in what actually ails them. Our research suggests that conventional methods used in research relating to veterans might at times be inadequate, because the inherent categorization might abstract, pathologize, and fragment a wide array of soldiers’ modes of post-combat being. Moreover, female veterans’ voices will not be fully heard unless we allow them to be active participants in generating knowledge about themselves.

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