Military Occupational Stressors in Garrison, Training, and Deployed Environments

As part of the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR) program to model soldier stress, health, and performance, stressors are analyzed across a variety of environments in terms of their impact on military personnel. According to Lazarus and Folkman (1984), an event or situation is considered stressful when perceived by the individual as taxing or exceeding coping resources, competencies, values, or self-concept. Military stressors occur in three major environments: garrison, training exercises, and deployments. Many of these stressors are similar to those found in nonmilitary work settings, but others are relatively unique. This presentation reviews the major stressors faced by military personnel across all three environments with an emphasis on recent research in each area. Work stressors include work overload, unpredictability, role stressors, and performance evaluation. Other potential military-specific stressors include exposure to potentially traumatizing events, such as experiencing threats to one's safety, being exposed to human suffering or death, perpetrating harm on others, and stressors with deployment, including austere living conditions, boredom, and family separation. Findings from a recent study with Homeland Defense soldiers highlight the importance of identifying and understanding occupational stressors during a real-world mission. In terms of continuing WRAIR research identifying military stressors, several tasks remain priorities: (1) refine measures of stressors for use across operations and environments; (2) continue to use a combination of interview and survey data to identify mission-specific stressors and their scope; and (3) regard the occupational stressors associated with military service within a multidimensional framework that includes each military environment. (1 table, 1 figure, 35 refs.) Presented at the NIOSH/APA Symposium on Modeling Military Stressors: The WRAIR Occupational Stress Research Program held in Toronto, Ontario, Canada on 21 Mar 2003.