Perinatal Mental Health and the Military Family

by Melinda A. Thiam

$55.95

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Author: Melinda A. Thiam

Publisher: Routledge

Paperback:
ISBN 10: 9781138924789
ISBN 13: 978-1138924789

This multi-disciplinary resource provides an overview of perinatal mental and physical health issues within the military population. Perinatal mental health has far-reaching implications for military readiness. The text provides insights to the effects of military culture on identification, evaluation, and treatment of perinatal mood and anxiety disorders and is an invaluable resource for military and civilian primary and behavioral health providers.

Review

“There is very little focus given to perinatal mental health and there are few providers who feel comfortable treating these women with psychotropic medications. But it is a significant need. Thus, programs that choose to focus their work on perinatal mental health tend to stand out and have an important place in the medical and psychological literature. The fact this this book addresses both pharmacological treatments, self-help, and psychological treatments adds to its relevance and publishability.”―Amy Cameron, PhD, assistant professor, Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior, Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University

From the Author

Military families are comprised of young men and women from a myriad of different backgrounds. Military service members and their families have to cope with stressors of military lifestyle and there are increasing amount of behavioral health disorders in service members and their families. Mental health challenges in service members and their spouses have negative effect on the military family, to include active duty service member, active duty/dependent spouse and especially the miltary child, as a military child is affected as early as pregnancy/perinatal period and continuing through adolescence.

In same fashion, perinatal mood and anxiety disorders have a ripple effect across entire family. It is well established that mental health of parents during pregnancy and early childhood years can have lasting influence on infant/child development. Because military families fall into age demographic of first time parenthood, it is critical to examine the effect of perinatal mental health in military families. Both perinatal mental illnesses in general population and mental health in military families can have consequences if left unrecognized.

There is relatively little literature and research dedicated to discussing perinatal mental health and military family. The development of this bok initially started when I was a military psychiatry resident trying to improve access to care and provide treatment to a unique subset of the military family. As this project progressed, different research from various specialties started to allow for networking between many clinicians who are contributing authors to this text. From this collaboration came a concerted effort by military and civilian providers both inside and outside of the military health system coming together to advocate for the military family. As most authors contributing to this process work for the Department of Defense, authors are not compensated for their work and thus they all freely volunteered time, knowledge and clinical/ academic expertise to produce this manuscript. Providers from fields of Obstetrics, Pediatrics, Family Medicine and Behavioral health have all graciously collaborated to produce a multi-disciplinary book that is targeted towards primary care and specialty behavioral health providers to use as resource for understanding perinatal mood and anxiety disorders, especially within military population.

As you read this guide, it is broken down to a stepwise fashion. First, we give a review of perinatal mental health followed by an introduction to the military family and discussion of mental health challenge innate to the military family. Then, we combine these two areas to address perinatal mental health in the military, discussing how military culture and military family dynamics affect the identification, evaluation and treatment of perinatal mood and anxiety disorders as well as discuss current research in perinatal mental health in military population. Overall, this text provides insights to the effects of military culture on identification, evaluation, and treatment of perinatal mood and anxiety disorders and is an invaluable resource for military and civilian primary care and behavioral health providers.

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Perinatal Mental Health and the Military Family