Finding Home: A Story About Two Military Families
Date
2018-05
Authors
Hinnant, Jade
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
Facing the difficulties that often come with military life, many service members experience unimaginable hardships. Long after the event is over, its affects may still linger with the individual who endured it and manifest into PTSD, or post-traumatic stress disorder. When an event has a certain level of trauma, it can affect the individual to the point of making them relive the event, cause nightmares, anxiety, depression, anger, and other unhealthy behaviors. As the individual interacts with family members, their emotional turmoil is often projected onto those they love, even though they may have no desire to do so. After researching multiple articles on families dealing with military PTSD, I began to understand the negative ramifications of PTSD not only on service members, but on their families as well. PTSD has tremendous potential to break down the family unit, cause disruption, and even break families apart altogether. Aside from hurting the family, it can actually transfer to family members in the form of secondary PTSD and continue to transfer for generations. While the articles were very informative, many of them simultaneously pointed out the lack of research on this topic. With a passionate desire to help these hurting families, I determined to use my research to write a children's story about families going through these very challenges. The characters of the story not only model the realistic trials of actual families, but also depict various solutions that families can use. It is my greatest hope that my final project will be a blessing to those who read it by providing scenarios they can relate to and offering tools that will help them heal and strengthen as a family unit.
Description
Keywords
children, military, PTSD, family, illustrations, deployment, reintegration, Honors College
Citation
Hinnant, J. (2018). Finding home: A story about two military families (Unpublished thesis). Texas State University, San Marcos, Texas.