Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you very much.
I want to say thank you very much for the award as well.
Normally, I start with a territorial acknowledgement. However, I realize that I have five minutes here, so I just want to say that I am on the Treaty 7 region in southern Alberta. I do want to recognize that in the name of truth and reconciliation.
I want to present in terms of my interest. My interest really came from my own personal PTSD—post-traumatic stress disorder—as well as seeing my children struggle with some mental health issues. There are some gaps in literature, and there are limited services, in particular for children. One thing my daughter said that really struck me was, “Why are you and dad able to go to an equine therapy program and I'm not able to?” It really impacted her as well. I still see that with her, and I see it with myself, when struggling still at times with my own PTSD, with some nightmares. As well, I'm easily startled.
This award means a lot to me.
I want to start by just saying that there's a large range of PTSD, depending on whether or not somebody's in a war zone. It can range from about 8% to 20%. A really important piece is that it impedes a family's functioning as well.
I looked at how families cope when they live with a military parent experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder. For my findings, I looked at what's called Corbin and Strauss's “grounded theory”, which looks at “how do I engage with the literature?” and “how do I engage with the data?”.
I had 25 participants. Twenty-one were non-military parents and four were adult children. I conducted interviews that were semi-structured and in-depth. For the findings, what happens with the grounded theory is that we really look at developing a theory: How can you explain and how can you predict coping?
The findings were family-evolving; that was my theory that I developed. I ended up looking at the definition as the process involved in “the modification, adjustment or alteration of family behaviours in responses to changes in the family environment with the aim of overcoming and adapting to adversity posed by military PTSD”. Basically what that means is that we're looking at the stressors and available resources. As the stressors become more predominant and the resources deplete, the more challenging it is for individuals to cope.
I just want to really quickly read one of the quotes that I have:
Life changed after he was diagnosed with PTSD. He changed; our family changed. The way we did things changed. We had to be careful not to upset him, so we walked on eggshells and tried not to get him going.
That was a very common theme: walking on eggshells and really trying to protect the family, and not only the family but the military member as well, to protect them from being triggered.
Based on this, I was able to determine that there are six states of functioning. I won't go into the details, just in the name of time here.
One of them was stability and healthy functioning, which occurred prior to the military member's having PTSD. Eleven of the participants knew the military member before PTSD, and that included all four of the adult children, who had known the military member before they developed PTSD. This state was stability and healthy functioning, which doesn't necessarily mean that there aren't any stressors; however, this was when there were not as many stressors experienced without PTSD.
Also, then, there are instability and wavering functioning. That occurred when there were more stressors placed on the family and the family had not as many resources, so they ended up spiralling a bit more into an area where they weren't functioning as well.
Five of the families ended up going into the next state, which was crisis and emergency functioning. What that looked like was really a crisis happening in the family, with risks to themselves or risks to others. Those could be suicide attempts. It could be police involvement. It could include child welfare. This happened in particular when the military system or Veterans Affairs was not providing enough support to them.
All of those families who did not have the support they needed ended up going into a crisis, unfortunately, and then they went into rebalancing and rebuilding.
Now, these families don't fit into this little box, so it's important to recognize that it's like an oscillating state of functioning. They go through some phases, but as well, they will not go through other states. They bounce all over the place, depending on those resources. Following the rebalancing are reoccurring instability and deflated hope. Once again, they started feeling hopeless that things would change.
Finally, there is a refocusing and evolving functioning. That point in time is really when they evolve. The military member is likely seeking support and the children are receiving support. Unfortunately, all four of the adult children did not receive any support. Their support often came from recreational activities, which can be problematic, because about 25% of families identify that they do not have the money for being able to attend those recreational activities.
The implications for military families are the recognition that prevention is really needed, and intervention as well, in looking at families oscillating again through those states. My theory was really able to capture the presenting concerns and the family dynamics, as well as coping, whereas most studies look at the presenting concerns and the family dynamics without taking into consideration the holistic piece there, and really recognizing as well that case managers play a role. Unfortunately, a lot of them did not find case managers helpful.
That being said, I do want to say that all of these families were extremely resilient, so my recommendation would be to ensure that multiple strategies are taking place to help families adapt to the change. Families continually revise and refine strategies and structures, so again, it's often an ongoing kind of process to ensure that families are getting that support as well and that there are proactive supports in place.
I will end there. I think that was about five minutes. That was very quick. I originally had a presentation of about an hour, so I cut it down as much as I could there. Thank you very much, and again, thank you very much for the award.
