Date of Conferral

2019

Degree

Ph.D.

School

Psychology

Advisor

James Herndon

Abstract

Since 9/11 over 2.77 million U.S. service members have deployed 5.4 million times to a theater of war with the majority serving in the U.S. Army. The increased stress inherent in a single combat deployment grows exponentially with each subsequent deployment, resulting in behavioral issues and suicide attempts and ideations. This study's purpose, following resilience theory, was to explore the associations of military life experiences (permanent changes of station, promotions, retirements, etc.) and deployment characteristics (number of deployments, operational specialties, combined lengths of deployments, etc.) to postdeployment resilience in U.S. military personnel. The study's design was a quantitative correlational research design; 102 participants were recruited through social media. Protective factors associated with resilience served as the dependent variable. The independent variables were time and transitions. Covariates included demographic data (age, gender, ethnicity, marital status, rank, branch of service, years of service, etc.), number of combat deployments, and combined length of deployments. The target population consisted of military service members with at least one combat deployment and had been redeployed for a minimum of one year. Results of this study may provide positive social change by identifying points and periods in the redeployment and post redeployment timeline service members can focus on to improve protective factors. Additionally, as Global War on Terror (GWOT) veterans begin leaving the service at an increased rate data focused on resilience may assist military mental health providers with developing treatment strategies that reinforce affect protective factors.

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