This multi-disciplinary resource provides an overview of perinatal mental and physical health issues within the military population. Perinatal mental health has far-reaching implications for military readiness. The text provides insights to the effects of military culture on identification, evaluation, and treatment of perinatal mood and anxiety disorders and is an invaluable resource for military and civilian primary and behavioral health providers.

This text introduces readers to military families, their resilience, and the challenges of military life. Personal stories from active duty, National Guard, reservists, veterans, and their families, from all branches and ranks of the military, and those who work with military personnel, bring their experiences to life. A review of the latest research, theories, policies, and programs better prepares readers for working with military families. Objectives, key terms, tables, figures, summaries, and exercises, including web based exercises, serve as a chapter review. The book concludes with a glossary of key terms. Engaging vignettes are featured throughout: Voices from the Frontline offer personal accounts of issues faced by actual program leaders, practitioners, researchers, policy makers, service members, and their families. Spotlight on Research highlights the latest studies on dealing with combat related issues. Best Practices review the optimal strategies used in the field. Tips from the Frontline offer suggestions from experienced personnel. The book opens with an introduction to military culture and family life. Joining the military and why people do so are explored in chapter 2. Next, life in the military including relocation, employment, education, and deployment are examined. Daily lives of children in military families are explored in chapter 4. How stress and resilience theories are used in working with military families are then reviewed. Chapter 6 focuses on milestones experienced by service members and programs that support them through these transitions. Everyday issues caused by the trauma of war are reviewed in Chapters 7 and 8. Programs, policies, and organizations that serve military families in dealing with deployment, education, and health and child care are explored in chapters 9 and 10 followed by initiatives supporting reintegration and reunification issues. Next, how to work with families and those who have experienced traumatic events is considered. The book concludes with a review of career opportunities and stories from working professionals. Intended as a text for advanced undergraduate or graduate courses on military families or as a supplement for courses on the family, marriage and family, stress and coping, or family systems taught in family studies, human development, clinical or counseling psychology, sociology, social work, and nursing, this book also appeals to helping professionals who work with military families.

This multi-disciplinary resource provides an overview of perinatal mental and physical health issues within the military population. Perinatal mental health has far-reaching implications for military readiness. The text provides insights to the effects of military culture on identification, evaluation, and treatment of perinatal mood and anxiety disorders and is an invaluable resource for military and civilian primary and behavioral health providers.

This aim of this open access book is to launch an international, cross-disciplinary conversation on fatherhood engagement. By integrating perspective from three sectors -- Health, Social Policy, and Work in Organizations -- the book offers a novel perspective on the benefits of engaged fatherhood for men, for families, and for gender equality. The chapters are crafted to engaged broad audiences, including policy makers and organizational leaders, healthcare practitioners and fellow scholars, as well as families and their loved ones.

Decades of research have demonstrated that the parent-child dyad and the environment of the familyâ€"which includes all primary caregiversâ€"are at the foundation of children's well- being and healthy development. From birth, children are learning and rely on parents and the other caregivers in their lives to protect and care for them. The impact of parents may never be greater than during the earliest years of life, when a child's brain is rapidly developing and when nearly all of her or his experiences are created and shaped by parents and the family environment. Parents help children build and refine their knowledge and skills, charting a trajectory for their health and well-being during childhood and beyond. The experience of parenting also impacts parents themselves. For instance, parenting can enrich and give focus to parents' lives; generate stress or calm; and create any number of emotions, including feelings of happiness, sadness, fulfillment, and anger. Parenting of young children today takes place in the context of significant ongoing developments. These include: a rapidly growing body of science on early childhood, increases in funding for programs and services for families, changing demographics of the U.S. population, and greater diversity of family structure. Additionally, parenting is increasingly being shaped by technology and increased access to information about parenting. Parenting Matters identifies parenting knowledge, attitudes, and practices associated with positive developmental outcomes in children ages 0-8; universal/preventive and targeted strategies used in a variety of settings that have been effective with parents of young children and that support the identified knowledge, attitudes, and practices; and barriers to and facilitators for parents' use of practices that lead to healthy child outcomes as well as their participation in effective programs and services. This report makes recommendations directed at an array of stakeholders, for promoting the wide-scale adoption of effective programs and services for parents and on areas that warrant further research to inform policy and practice. It is meant to serve as a roadmap for the future of parenting policy, research, and practice in the United States.

Care of Military Service Members, Veterans, and Their Families serves a critical need, which has been highlighted by recent reported rates of combat-related stress disorders and traumatic brain injury, as well as increases in suicide rates among service members and veterans over the past decade and the distress and challenges faced by their children and families. More than 2.5 million Americans currently serve in the U.S. military on active duty, in the Reserves, or in the National Guard, and more than 20 million civilians are veterans. Although patients are viewed here in the context of military service, they seek health care in military, veteran, and civilian settings, and their mental health concerns are as diverse as those encountered in the civilian population. This book is designed for clinicians in all care settings and provides thorough coverage of U.S. military structures and cultures across the armed services, as well as detailed material on the particular mental health challenges faced by service members and their families. A full overview of the military lifestyle is provided, including the life cycle of the military (recruitment to retirement), service subcultures (Navy, Army, Marines, Air Force, and Reserve and Guard components), challenges of military life for service members and families (moves, deployments, etc.), and military mental health. Material on military culture provides insight for practitioners who may not be familiar with this population. The book focuses on collaborative care, particularly between the military health care system and the Veterans Administration, providing clinicians with strategies to mitigate stigma and other barriers to care through mental health service delivery in primary care settings. The incidence of traumatic brain injury among service members has increased because of the use of improvised explosive devices, and an entire chapter is devoted to diagnosing and treating these injuries as well as educating patients and their families on the condition. The families of service members face significant challenges, and several chapters are devoted to the needs of military children, the families of ill and injured service members and veterans, deployment-related care, and caring for the bereaved. The book's comprehensive review of resources available to military service members, veterans, and families both ensures high-quality care and reduces the workload for treating physicians. Care of Military Service Members, Veterans, and Their Families is an authoritative and much-needed addition to the mental health literature.

This handbook is currently in development, with individual articles publishing online in advance of print publication. At this time, we cannot add information about unpublished articles in this handbook, however the table of contents will continue to grow as additional articles pass through the review process and are added to the site. Please note that the online publication date for this handbook is the date that the first article in the title was published online. Perinatal psychology is a field devoted to understanding the biopsychosocial experiences of women and men during the transition to parenthood. These experiences include pregnancy, labor, delivery, adjustment and parenting during the postpartum period, lactation, family planning, adoption, infertility, and adjustment to perinatal loss.