The mental health effects of combat on the soldier and his or her significant other remain a challenge for National Guard families, who often reside in communities that show little understanding of the psychological costs of war. Barriers remain for mental health service utilization.

Citizen soldiers (National Guard and Reserves) represent approximately 40% of the two million armed forces deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq. Twenty-five to forty percent of them develop PTSD, clinical depression, sleep disturbances, or suicidal thoughts. Upon returning home, many encounter additional stresses and hurdles to obtaining care: specifically, many civilian communities lack military medical/psychiatric facilities; financial, job, home, and relationship stresses have evolved or have been exacerbated during deployment; uncertainty has increased related to future deployment; there is loss of contact with military peers; and there is reluctance to recognize and acknowledge mental health needs that interfere with treatment entry and adherence. Approximately half of those needing help are not receiving it. To address this constellation of issues, a private-public partnership was formed under the auspices of the Welcome Back Veterans Initiative. In Michigan, the Army National Guard teamed with the University of Michigan and Michigan State University to develop innovative peer-to-peer programs for soldiers (Buddy-to-Buddy) and augmented programs for military families. Goals are to improve treatment entry, adherence, clinical outcomes, and to reduce suicides. This manuscript describes training approaches, preliminary results, and explores future national dissemination.

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The current study examined rates of alcohol misuse among National Guard (NG) service members and their spouses/partners, concordance of drinking behaviors among couples, and the effects of alcohol misuse, depression, and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) on three measures of family functioning. This study is important because it addresses the topics of heavy drinking and family functioning in an at-risk population-NG service members returning from a combat zone deployment. We surveyed NG service members (1,143) and their partners (674) 45-90 days after returning from a military deployment. Service member rates of hazardous drinking were 29.2% and spouses/partners 10.7%. Of the 661 linked couples, 26.2% were discrepant where only one member met the criteria for hazardous drinking and 5.4% were congruent for alcohol misuse where both members met hazardous drinking criteria. Service members belonging to either congruent or discrepant drinking groups were more distressed in their marriages/relationships than those in the nonhazardous group. In dyadic analyses, an unexpected partner effect was found for parenting outcomes; that is, when service members drink more, their spouses/partners are less stressed when it comes to parenting. Importantly, both service member and spouse/partner depression was significantly associated with negative family outcomes. Results from this study suggest that when working with these families, it is important to understand the drinking status of both soldier and spouse and to treat depression in addition to alcohol misuse.

The military community and its partners have made vigorous efforts to address treatment barriers and increase appropriate mental health services use among returning National Guard soldiers. We assessed whether there were differences in reports of treatment barriers in 3 categories (stigma, logistics, or negative beliefs about treatment) in sequential cross-sectional samples of U.S. soldiers from a Midwestern Army National Guard Organization who were returning from overseas deployments. Data were collected during 3 time periods: September 2007-August 2008 (n = 333), March 2009-March 2010 (n = 884), and August 2011-August 2012 (n = 737). In analyses using discretized time periods and in trend analyses, the percentages of soldiers endorsing negative beliefs about treatment declined significantly across the 3 sequential samples (19.1%, 13.9%, and 11.1%). The percentages endorsing stigma barriers (37.8%, 35.2%, 31.8%) decreased significantly only in trend analyses. Within the stigma category, endorsement of individual barriers regarding negative reactions to a soldier seeking treatment declined, but barriers related to concerns about career advancement did not. Negative treatment beliefs were associated with reduced services use (OR = 0.57; 95% CI [0.33, 0.97]).