Supporting Resilience in Military Families – from Research to Practice

Abstract

Like many Canadian families, military families deal with struggles around financial stress, intimate partner relationships, mental health, and personal well-being. But military families also face challenges that are altogether unique to the military lifestyle: relocation due to operational postings, repeated absences due to military requirements and taskings, and risk of injury and death. Quite often the combination of these challenges compound each other. Moreover, many of these uniquely military challenges are systemic and repetitive – meaning families will be faced with them again and again. Resilience, the ability to bounce back from adversity, can help families navigate these repetitive and systemic challenges by learning to adapt to changing environments quickly and positively. Military Family Services, a division of Canadian Forces Morale and Welfare Services, relies on research as the grounding for modernization of services to better support the resilience of Canadian military and Veteran families.