The results imply that there are significant and enduring adverse effects of parental deployment on the mental health of children in military families, and provide some insight into the potential long-term impacts of recent military engagements in Afghanistan and Iraq. They also reported poorer current mental health (Coefficient = -5.08, CI = -6.60 -3.56). One of the most notable examples was his eventual arrest and conviction upon refusing to serve in the armed forces during the Vietnam War. The key independent variable was whether their fathers were deployed to the Vietnam War.Īlmost 40 years after the war, the adult children of deployed veterans were more likely to have been diagnosed with anxiety and depression (OR = 1.77, CI = 1.03, 3.05), to have had thoughts of suicide and self-harm (OR = 2.39, CI = 1.57, 3.65) and to have made suicidal plans (OR = 3.52, CI = 1.40, 8.85) than the offspring of comparable, non-deployed army veterans. lifetime and previous 12 months), suicidality based on Psychiatric Symptom Frequency Scale, and current mental health as measured by the Mental Health Inventory of the SF-36. The main outcome measures were self-reported diagnosis or treatment for anxiety and depression (i.e. We analysed data from 1966 adult men (35%) and women (65%) whose fathers (N = 1418) were selected at random from the population of surviving men who served in the Australian army during the Vietnam War (1962-75). Using a retrospective, multigenerational survey and propensity score analysis to adjust for selection effects and endogeneity bias, we investigated the impact of parental deployment on the mental health of the adult children of Australian veterans of the Vietnam War.
The long-term effects of military deployment on the mental health of war veterans have been investigated extensively, but few studies have examined the long-term impact of parental deployment on children's mental health.