Soldiers on Deployment Self-Efficacy

This study focused on important resilience resources for soldiers, allowing them to face threats with courage during deployment. In the military, self-efficacy and family support have both positive and negative consequences that can be quantified. It is true that low self-efficacy can have bad effects in high-threat situations, just as great self-efficacy can have negative consequences in low-threat ones. Family support comes into play here since it can address both effects.

Military organizations use preventive measures to support soldiers’ well-being and job effectiveness while deployed. This strategy is critical because it allows military teams to have a positive outcome with their subsequent implementations. As soldiers are sent on various missions, the power to efficiently act with the aim of copping up with deployment knowledge is vital for maintaining well-being and soldier’s health and to ensure military organizations are working efficiently.

When soldiers are on deployment they face various challenges (Delahaij, Kamphuis & van den Berg, 2016). These challenges include coming into contact with enemy troops, roadside bombs, incoming fire and other dangerous situations that can affect their lives. On the other hand service members have restricted rules about their engagement; they also face a boredom and separation from their families back at home. Job-demand resource model states that personal and work resources can increase the negative impacts of resilience.

When military organizations are preparing for deployment, their main aim is to equip service members with the required skills to tackle deployment stressors. Bias, however, exists towards preparing for unfavorable outcomes and the spectrum’s high-end violence. Soldiers are forced to use their firearms efficiently even under high pressure. Real life scenarios are used to prepare combat units and possible ambushes. This training equips soldiers with a sense of control, through self-efficacy, an essential tool for military resilience when faced with a threat.

For a majority of the service members on different missions, their daily activities are reflected in their experience for deployment leaving out the exposure to the threat. Since this fact is in contrast with expectations from deployment training, it can affect the service members negatively. Also, soldiers feel the confrontation with enemies as a way of testing their attitude and professional skills, and even as a transformational path that shapes a right service member (Delahaij, Kamphuis & van den Berg, 2016). Due to this, being exposed to threat is usually about the positive adjustments after deployment. On the opposite side, when a service member fails to show his worthiness as a soldier: can lead to doubting a mission and profession too. The judgment of the worthiness of work during deployment was about post-deployment understanding of deployment benefits for the soldiers.

Many service members can maintain their engagement in their military work despite the promising way of disappointment regarding the realities of military missions. It indicates that apart from self-efficacy, other military resources for resilience can take play. One essential resource that can help service members remain focused on their duties is social support. It has significant buffering results in the well-being of individuals under challenging conditions. The most considered social support that is relevant is that which comes from the family. When a threat is absent, other ordinary deployment stress comes in such as soldier’s separation from their family. When this happens soldiers are taught the importance of resources that mitigate adverse effects of these pressures, the family support being one of those resources.

It is true that soldier’s morale during deployment can be boosted by family support. Social support from the family might be considered relevant at times of relative tranquility during military works as the family may offer an alternative opinion regarding the situation to benefit the service members. Members of the family will worry less and have a reduced level of anxiety for injury about their loved ones. When these two factors are combined, family support and self-efficacy, they show a buffering and an annoying effect concerning stress relationship. For instance, self-efficacy and support from the supervisor have a connected impact on stress relationship for military soldiers. Supervisor’s social support has a positive effect when adapting to job force when self-efficacy was high and adverse effects when it was low.

The future directions for this research will be to determine the dynamics of threat, family support, and self-efficacy. First threat will be handled in three ways: the knowledge of how life-threatening occasions can cause distress, the harmful effects of this trouble and how threatening events can make soldiers disengage from their missions thereby leading to low work engagement. Self-efficacy will consider two groups of people, those with high self-efficacy and those who lack it. It will also examine the advantages being faced by those people with high self-efficacy.

Communication between service members and their families has a positive effect towards a soldier’s performance. It helps service members’ mental health and occupational effectiveness during deployment. The psychological health of military soldiers during deployment is affected by communication between them and family and also friends. During deployment communication between a soldier and his or her family is considered to be an essential thing. It is because the ability of service member to communicate with a friend or family member helps to boost morale and more, so family support helps to reduce incidences such as the risk of exposure to mental health problems. These mental health problems can hurt occupational functioning. For instance, it is true that psychological issues can represent the most critical source of occupational morbidity among militaries. Thus communication with friends and families during deployment can have a direct effect on occupational functioning.

Easy access to communications media is reported to have a significant effect on the emotional state of soldiers when deployed. During the deployment period, various rules are always set regarding the amount of time and days a soldier is allowed to communicate to his families and friends. At most, it is ever fixed at between fifteen and twenty minutes, once or twice in a week. There are various modes of communication which soldiers use when on deployment, the first being telephone, video conferencing can also be used.

The research suggests that communication between deployed soldiers and their loved ones or spouses has a positive impact. For instance, this connection helps to reduce boredom, maintaining and increasing the morale of the soldiers, and reducing isolation. Military organizations are also aiding this as they reassure soldiers can communicate with their families while on deployment if anything goes wrong. The type of shared information even matters, for instance, when service members on implementation are contacted by their family members informing them of family events such as birthday parties and weddings, makes dealing with family separation easier to manage as it helps to prevent loss of marital intimacy. Communication with loved ones also has an adverse effect as it can make deployed soldiers become angry for being separated from their families (Knobloch, Basinger, Wehrman, Ebata & McGlaughlin, 2016).

It is true that isolation of soldiers from their family members can lead to a high number of troops surrendering and aborting their mission. Too much contact is discouraged as it can cause distractions, affecting occupational functioning, morale and unit cohesion. In contradiction, communication between soldiers and their families could cause stress (Delahaij, Kamphuis & van den Berg, 2016). The stressors were mentioned by the troops as the significant leading factor to their weight while on deployment. The issues that lead to this stress include ambiguity over the length of the tour and separation of soldiers from their families. These home-front stressors had a direct consequence as they were the cause of mental problems affecting the service members. For those members who are vulnerable, it was predicted that lack of communication with their families could precipitate their mental health conditions. Soldiers feel the importance of protecting their families and to do so they lie about the circumstances in which they are working. It can, however, have adverse effects towards the family members as they may feel frustrated thereby leading to higher stress for both sides.

Families, moderators, and other mediator’s support have positive effects towards the performance of soldiers (Delahaij, Kamphuis & van den Berg, 2016). For example, the family support provides soldiers with comforting and understanding resources which help them view the experience as a less threatening process. Family support controls the relationship between self-efficacy and threat on engagement into military work. Family support has a positive influence towards those service members with a low self-efficacy as they seem to face more distress by being exposed to the threats.

Moderator’s support such as that from the supervisor or a fellow friend in the team is vital as it satisfied a soldier’s job satisfaction under high demand jobs when self-efficacy was strong. When it was low, job satisfaction was also depressed when receiving social support. Family support is also helpful considering the relation between low levels of threat and self-efficacy. For example, those soldiers with a high level of self-efficacy may be frustrated and stressed due to lack of challenge and opportunity to prove that they are real soldiers. For this category of members, family support can help re-estimate the situation in a kind manner thereby helping them to stay engaged. Under incidences of high threat exposure, family support aids low self-efficacy (Knobloch, Basinger, Wehrman, Ebata & McGlaughlin, 2016). These supports help the service members who have a low level of self-efficacy to experience lowest burnout levels and an increased rate of work engagement.

With the increased level of tour lengths and decreased time between the tours, regular communication of deployed soldiers with their families and friends is increasingly becoming so important in the military forces as it is used to mitigate the operational isolation being felt by some military families when a member of the family, a soldier is away. It may also be considered that the need for providing more access to forms of free communication would reduce the cost of losing the most experienced military personnel who are encouraged to leave by their families. Married service members are also supposed to be considered by offered more time of communicating with their families as compared to the single service members (Knobloch, Basinger, Wehrman, Ebata & McGlaughlin, 2016).

In conclusion, it is true that the research has shown and proven that communication of soldiers while on deployment with family members and friends has positive effects on member’s mental health, occupational functioning, and morale.

Reference

Delahaij, R., Kamphuis, W., & van den Berg, C. (2016). Keeping engaged during deployment: The interplay between self-efficacy, family support, and threat exposure. Military Psychology, 28(2), 78-88. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/mil0000098

Knobloch, L., Basinger, E., Wehrman, E., Ebata, A., & McGlaughlin, P. (2016). Communication of Military Couples During Deployment and Reunion: Changes, Challenges, Benefits, and Advice. Journal Of Family Communication, 16(2), 160-179. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15267431.2016.1146723