Overcoming through Service: Psychological Resilience and Military Service Member Profiles

Background and Purpose: Contemporary research on mental health and resilience often conceptualizes the US military population into one homogenous group, without carefully attending to the experiences and strengths of heterogenous subgroups who serve. While this approach facilitates research that can be applied to inform broad interventions and policy improvements, it discounts the reality that interventions empirically supported for homogenous populations are less effective when applied within substantially diverse contexts (such as the military).

Methods: This research study employed an Explanatory Sequential Mixed-Methods Research Design to address 2 key research aims: 1) to examine differences in psychological resilience across social strata profiles within the active-duty military setting; and 2) to use phenomenological approaches to understand how SMs inhabiting intersecting social profiles engage in resilience strategies, navigate environmental and cultural obstacles, and to identify opportunities for contributing to their resiliency. The mixed methodology was employed to help explain the heterogeneity in psychological resilience across indicators of social stratification and to understand the obstacles, strategies, and opportunities associated with the distinct service member profiles.

The quantitative strand of this research originated from primary data collected between April and July of 2021 from an active-duty military unit behavioral health survey. The final purposive-criterion sample included a total of N = 1,840 anonymous active-duty soldiers. This study employed Multilevel Modeling (using a two-level modeling strategy) and Ordinary Least Squares Regression, to provide empirical support on notable differences in psychological resilience across the hypothesized military social profiles (based on intersectionality), without using a reference group as the standard. The qualitative strand of this research involved a pilot sample of active duty US Army soldiers (n = 8) who were identified through snowball sampling. Qualitative data were collected using virtual semi-structured focus groups, and helped explain the quantitative research findings by giving voice to the lived experiences of the SM participants who inhabit the social profiles revealed through the quantitative results.

Results: The quantitative findings provided empirical support suggesting that military social strata, operationalized as social locations at the intersection of rank status, gender, and racialization, were predictive of psychological resilience active-duty military members. The qualitative findings collected from members of the military social strata who were at-risk for lower resilience, revealed specific obstacles to psychological resilience, functional resilience strategies, and recommendations for improving environmental conditions to bolster resilience.

Conclusions and Implications: This research contributes to advancing the literature on mental health and resilience among military members by highlighting the resilience of individuals who inhabit multiple intersecting social positions, while serving within the military. Findings underscore the need for more rigorous study designs and analytic methods to accurately capture the experiences of disparate subpopulations within the military. The findings also give voice to the lived experiences of active duty SMs, by capturing narratives of resilience and functional resilience strategies. Findings offer insights into promising approaches for mental health practitioners and leaders who desire to improve SM mental health and resilience through micro and macro level intervention efforts.