Military Update: Study: Deployments take toll on military children

[unhappycamper]

Military Update: Study: Deployments take toll on military children
By Tom Philpott, Special to Stars and Stripes
Pacific edition, Saturday, December 12, 2009

Multiple, lengthy wartime deployments by servicemembers are taking an emotional toll on their children, who report being anxious or stressed at rates much higher than children nationwide, a new study concludes.

Researchers with the think tank RAND interviewed more than 1,500 home caregivers (or nondeployed parent) and their children, ages 11 to 17, to learn what impact deployments to Iraq or Afghanistan are having.

The study found that youth who experience parental deployment suffer more "emotional difficulties" in connecting to families, engaging in school work and mixing with peers than do children of the same ages across the country.

That military children are more stressed in wartime was not a revelation. But researchers were surprised to learn their problems deepened with longer or more frequent deployments. This challenged an assumption that children might, with repetition, get used to a parent being gone and later reintegrating with the family.

"We did think maybe these challenges would wane and people would get into adjustment mode," said the study’s principal investigator, Dr. Anita Chandra, in a phone interview Wednesday. "And what we found was that cumulative months of exposure to deployment really seemed to hold up and present (more) challenges for families."


Rest of article at: http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=66630

[unabelladonna]

1. ummmm, DUH.

who could have thought that would happen.