Wives Left Behind: Factors that Impact Active Duty Wives' Psychological Well-being while Experiencing Deployment-Related Separation

Current world events have led to increased deployments among military members. While these deployments are a necessary part of military service, separations create changes within the family dynamics and add stress to an already stressful situation. Military wives' psychological well-being is negatively impacted by these increased levels of stress. Specifically, military wives become isolated from their husbands and are required to accept roles previously held by their husbands. These types of circumstances can undermine the quality of the spousal relationship. Furthermore, communication between a wife and her deployed husband is often unpredictable and infrequent, which creates more strain on the marriage and has the potential to continue decreasing military wives' psychological well-being. Ultimately, these decreases in military wives' psychological well-being tax the individual, the family, and the military community, as well as increase the burden on the health care system.;This study developed and tested an integrated conceptual model to show how the quality of spousal relationship and frequency of communication with the husband predict military wives' psychological well-being while experiencing separation caused by deployment. This study further examined how informal support networks, formal support networks, wives' satisfaction with employment opportunities, and wives' satisfaction with community moderate the associations between the quality of spousal relationship, frequency of communication with the husband, and wives' psychological well-being. Specifically, structural equation modeling was used to analyze the direct relationships between each of these factors and military wives' psychological well-being. Additionally, this study tested the moderating effects of the interactions between the variables. Other contributing factors (i.e., branch of service, paygrade, age, and if a service member's deployment was extended or not) were controlled for in this study to further isolate the effects of the factors of interest.;The results show there are several factors that predict military wives' psychological well-being during deployment-induced separation. While all of the factors directly predict military wives' psychological well-being, some of them also moderate the relationships between the quality of spousal relationship, frequency of communication with the husband, and wives' psychological well-being. These findings provide insight into the nature of military wives' psychological well-being and how it is affected by separation. Additionally, the results of this study have implications for policymakers and mental health professionals by highlighting factors that should be focused on when creating and implementing programs designed to prevent and offset the negative impacts of separation caused by military deployments. Precisely, the results show the areas where resources can be focused to enable military wives to overcome the increased stressors present during separations caused by military deployments.