Essay On Army Spouses

Author’s Theme This article reports the findings in which the adaptive (planning, positive framing, and active coping) and maladaptive (venting, behavioral disengagement, and self-blame) skills of Army spouses and public school teachers were studied. The study compared the results of flourishing, languishing, or depressed Army spouses and teachers. Comparison was completed for the subsets of venting, behavioral disengagement, self-blame, planning, positive reframing, and active coping. Data was collected from Army spouses through self-report survey at a monthly Family Readiness Group (FRG) meeting or online at the FRG’s website. Teachers were selected using a database of teachers who received the teaching excellence award and packets were distributed using the US Post Office. Each teacher received a packet containing six surveys, one to fill out and five for colleagues. Positive and negative emotions were measured on a scale of 1 (not at all) to 5 (very much so). The numbers were added up and placed into one of three categories: flourishing, languishing, or depressed. Findings discovered that the three categories were similar for Army spouses and teachers. The differences were in the coping strategy utilized. …show more content…
Army spouses scored higher on maladaptive coping strategies, compared to adaptive. For the categories of depressed and languishing, venting was a more prominent source of coping. Teachers used more adaptive strategies, with lower use of positive framing compared to planning and active coping. Flourishing and languishing teachers reported use of all three adaptive coping strategies. Teachers also incorporated the maladaptive coping strategy of