Impact of Work Induced Sepa Ration on the Psychological Well-Being of Spouses of Military Personnel

Abstract

With the inception of insurgency in 2009, a large number of soldiers have being deployed to the North East. While these deployments are  necessary part of the military service, separation brings about changes within the family structure and add stress to the already existing  stress of raising a family. Consequently these Military personnel and their spouses have suffered numerous psychological problems as  well as disruption to contribution of the military personnel to their household and marital responsibilities. A semi-Structured interview  was conducted with twenty (20) Military spouses in 2(two) Army barracks within Lagos and some commonly used slogans emerged:  Husbands in diaspora, our visiting wives, check out my new look, have you seen the picture, keep in touch and so on. The participants  accentuated various ways with which they maintain their relationship with their spouses. Some of the participants honestly agreed that the separation has both beneficial and harmful consequences on their relationships, but they handle it through frequent communication, trusting each other despite the separation, frequent visitation, sharing their marriage relationship goals, always getting  into each other emotional space. The qualitative study carried out showed the there are several factors that results from separation due  to the military job. While all of the factors directly predict military spouse psychological well-being, some of them also moderate the  relationships between the quality of spousal relationship, frequency of communication with the husband, and spouse well-being. These  findings provide insight into the nature of military service, its relationship to the spouse psychological well-being and how it is affected by work induced separation. Precisely, the results show the areas where resources can be focused to enable military spouses overcome the  increased stressors present during separations caused by military job induced separation.