Military Hardiness as a Buffer of Psychological Health on Return from Deployment

Military Medicine, Feb 2006 by Dolan, Carol A, Adler, Amy B

Military hardiness, the context-specific adaptation of psychological hardiness, is explored as it relates to military occupational stressors. It was hypothesized that military hardiness would moderate the effects of deployment stressors on soldier health. In a survey study of 629 U.S. soldiers, deployment stressors, military hardiness, and psychological and physical health were assessed during a peacekeeping deployment. Health was measured again after deployment. Results of moderated regression analyses partially supported the hypotheses; military hardiness moderated the impact of deployment stressors on depression after deployment, after controlling for depression during deployment. Implications for training military hardiness and applications to other occupational settings are discussed.

Introduction

The work environment can be the source of many stressors for individuals, contributing to high levels of strain that can negatively affect health. The military environment is a workplace with the full range of occupational stressors,' as well as additional stressors specific to the military environment.2 The effects of these military occupational stressors on physical and psychological health have been previously identified.3 Military occupational stressors associated with deployment may require military personnel to deploy away from the home environment for long periods of time and to be exposed to dangerous work environments. In their 1998 article, Bartone et al.4 identified isolation, ambiguity, powerlessness, boredom, and danger as stressors specific to the deployed environment. Deployment-related stressors have also been shown to affect psychological and physical health both during deployment and after return to the home station.4

Research on the nature of the link between stressors and health over the past several decades has indicated that several factors moderate the effect of work stress on strain outcomes.5 Several work-related variables have been identified as buffering the impact of stress on physical outcomes and psychological outcomes such as depression. Some of these work-related variables are job engagement,6 job commitment,7 perceptions of job control,8 and social support at work.9,10 Individual difference variables such as dispositional optimism, a generalized expectancy for positive outcomes, have also been associated with better psychosocial adjustment and less depression.11

Another individual difference variable that has been found to buffer the effects of stress is psychological hardiness. Psychological hardiness12 is defined as a personality style or tendency, fairly stable over time, that is composed of the following interrelated components: (1) commitment (vs. alienation), referring to the ability to feel deeply involved in activities of life; (2) control (vs. powerlessness), the belief one can control or influence events of one's experience; and (3) challenge (vs. threat), the sense of anticipation of change as an exciting challenge to further development.

Since 1979, an extensive body of research has shown that hardiness buffers ill effects of work-related stress on health among a wide variety of occupations. For example, hardiness has been found to relate to work-related stress among middle managers,13 health care workers,14,15 and athletes,16 among others. In addition, the concept of hardiness has been shown to influence outcomes among U.S. Army casualty assistance workers,17 Gulf War soldiers,18 peacekeeping soldiers,19 Israeli soldiers in combat training,20 and Israeli officer candidates.21

Military Hardiness: A Context-Specific Measure of Hardiness in the Military Workplace

Although hardiness has been found to moderate the effects of military occupational stressors, the conceptualization of hardiness is a relatively global psychological construct. In response to this global conceptualization, occupational health researchers have adapted the generic measure of psychological hardiness described by Kobasa12 for use in specific stressor contexts. For example, Pollock and Duffy22,23 developed the Health-Related Hardiness Scale, which redefines hardiness as a personality resource that enables individuals to adjust to, cope with, or even benefit from health problems. This scale measures (1) a sense of commitment to good health, along with the motivation and competence to cope effectively with a health-related stressor; (2) the perception of control over one's ability to appraise and interpret health stressors and to perform health behaviors; and (3) a sense of challenge regarding one's ability to manage one's health through reappraisal of health stressors as stimulating and potentially beneficial experiences. This adapted measure predicted patients' health status, their compliance, and their recovery from medical challenges23 and also exhibited a moderating effect on self-ratings of health.22

In the present study, the context-specific adaptation of the hardiness construct is explored as it relates to military occupational stressors. Rather than focusing on the global concept of psychological hardiness, hardiness is measured as the degree to which military personnel are committed to, feel challenged by and have some sense of control over their work experiences in the military environment.