Reintegration Stage Of Military Life

Military member’s experience many different stages within their military career one particularly difficult stage is the reintegration stage. Reintegration, or post deployment stage, is the stage of the deployment cycle by the service member’s reentry into their daily life as experienced prior to deployment, or into a new civilian life, including the areas of work, family, and personal experiences (Pincus, House, Christenson, & Adler, 2001). Many families have difficulties with this stage because it may last several months, but can also persist for months to years depending on the individual service member, their family, and the fuller context of the service member’s life. Reintegration can be a stormy time for the family, as members must re-form into a functioning system. Pincus, House, Christenson, and Adler, (2001) suggest that relationship stress and negative family function may reach a peak between 4 to 9 months after the service member’s return, mainly due to the service member settling in. One of the greatest challenges for these families appears to be renegotiating family roles as the service member encounters the often-unexpected

This difficulty functioning in stressful situations can increase the difficultness of reintegrating back after a deployment. Psychological trauma could lead to low frustration tolerance, poor anger management, difficulties in coping and self-regulation, and hypervigilance. Due to this service members may have an increase in issues with interpersonal interactions with their families. Also, a recent study looking at newly returning veterans found that they had more physical symptoms, greater symptom severity, lower ratings of general health, more sick call visits and more missed workdays than their civilian counterpart (Hoge and colleagues,