The analysis of Ray & Vanstone (2009) "The impact of PTSD on veterans family relationships"

I have gained a much deeper understanding of the issues that affect military families due to military service. The Ray & Vanstone (2009) paper includes practical examples from people who have been in this situation. When some serving members return from war they began to dissociate and isolate themselves. This resulted in arguments and disagreements. Also, one of the soldiers became increasingly protective of his children after seeing all the hurt and dead children in war. This made him very over protective. After another soldier shut out his family, it badly affected his son. His son could not understand his father’s behavior; mood swings, anger issues and silence. His son felt abandoned and very hurt which made him act out (842). Basically after the war a lot of serving members developed behavior to deal with stress of the war; they had mood swings, anger, isolated themselves and tried to keep all negativity inside. Sadly, this has an adverse effect on the families, they feel abandoned, unloved and struggle to understand why this person has changed so much. 

The mental health of serving members is greatly impacted by military families. According to Ray & Vanstone (2009), emotional withdrawal from family support tends to create a problem with healing from trauma. In the study one serving member had issues with his family constantly confronting him which brought about a chaotic and unsupportive environment for him. Some families would show disappointment in serving members when they do not do things expected of them. This would result in the member not doing anything so as to avoid doing the wrong thing and being the cause for problems. Some families’ lack of understanding caused increased conflict which created a vicious cycle (843-844). This type of environment makes it difficult for soldiers to get better or heal and could in fact make the situation a lot worse. 

Reference 

Ray, L. S., & Vanstone, M. (2009). The impact of PTSD on veterans’ family relationships: An interpretative phenomenological inquiry. International Journal of Nursing Studies (46). Pp. 842-844.