Introduction to Special Section on Military Spouses and the Social Context

Military spouses are an essential part of the military community, and the military community is shaped by their presence. Indeed, the connections created by military spouses define much of that military community. At the core of these connections is the relationship between military spouses and their military partners. Beyond the ties of family, there are social connections with other military families. These relationships have the potential to support service members and their families as they respond to the challenges and opportunities of military life. In the current special section, we have selected a series of articles that speak to these various aspects of the military family’s experience. This special section, “Military Spouses and the Social Context,” reviews four articles from researchers in the field. These articles offer perspectives on the military spouse’s experience in terms of their social context as defined by their partner serving in the military, their larger community, and interventions designed to improve social support, coping strategies, and mental health. Specifically, two articles address how military spouses are influenced by their partners: one in terms of the mental health of the partner serving in the military and one in terms how much couples discuss their deployment experience. The articles also address community connection directly by examining how perceived community connection is related to mental health and reporting on an intervention designed to improve social connection. Both articles, in their own way, try to move the field forward by highlighting dimensions to the spouse experience in the military environment and ways to build on and improve that experience. In the first article, a unique analysis of couple dyads, Donoho and colleagues link soldier mental health and levels of stress reported by military spouses. Surprisingly, symptoms of anxiety and posttraumatic stress disorder reported by soldiers were not correlated with spouse reports of stress, although depression symptoms were. Furthermore, perceptions of poor community support independently accounted for spousal stress, demonstrating that community integration is a critical component of spousal adjustment. In the second article, Knobloch and colleagues studied service members and spouses in the postdeployment phase of their relationship. This theory-driven study examined characteristics of couples who choose to avoid discussing deployment-related topics. Knobloch and colleagues report on the association between avoiding such discussions, decreased marital satisfaction, and facets of the relational turbulence model. Results demonstrate how relational uncertainty and partner interference are associated with reduced communication about the deployment, a strategy that is likely to impede how couples reconnect after a deployment. This article provides an effective framework for understanding how military families address deployment stressors and insights into how such families might be supported in the future. In the third article, by Crouch and colleagues, spouses from two different overseas communities were surveyed. Perceived social connection was significantly associated with mental health, physical health, and marital satisfaction. Much like the Donoho et al. study, such results reinforce the need for military families to be socially connected in their communities. Such connection, however, appears more than just a function of objective indicators of community support. Data from this unusual sample provide new insights in understanding the expat military community and emphasize the importance of the quality of social connection. Finally, in a randomized trial, Nichols and colleagues report on the benefit of support provided to military spouses. Spouses were randomly assigned to either a telephone support group or education webinars. At followup, spouses in both intervention conditions reported improved mental health, suggested that both intervention strategies were useful in helping spouses cope with