Resilience and other reactions to military deployment: the complex task of identifying distinct adjustment trajectories.

Abstract

of psychological resilience to the effects of military deployment and some insight into the factors underlying it. In addition, they present evidence of a wide array of other adjustment trajectories following military deployment. In relation to resilience, 78% of Danish soldiers experienced minimal posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms before deployment and up to 2.5 years after. These results are consistent with other recent investigations of soldiers’ capacity to weather the stress of war. For example, Bonanno and colleagues 2 found that 83% of American military personnel deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan showed low levels of posttraumatic stress symptoms both before and up to 5 years after their deployment. Similarly, Dickstein and colleagues, 3 in a longitudinal study of American peacekeepers in Kosovo, found that over 80% showed minimal PTSD symptoms before their deployment and no increase in distress after it. Indeed, there can be little doubt that the considerable majority of soldiers are able to return to their normal levels of functioning after deployment to a war zone. The human capacity to endure and even thrive under conditions of acute stress, once considered rare or a reflection of extraordinary coping abilities, is now increasingly recognized as normative, 4 the rule rather than the exception. In response to events as diverse as bereavement, traumatic injury, life-threatening disease, and even terrorist attack, 5 most people are able to