Welcome to this week’s edition of CDP News! We like to use this space to review recent happenings in and around the Center for Deployment Psychology, while also looking ahead to upcoming events. May is shaping up to be a very busy month around here. We’ve got lots of things on the horizon, so let’s get to it!
The CDP's weekly research update contains the latest news, journal articles and useful links from around the web. Some of this week's topics include:
● Prevalence and Consequences of Sleep Problems in Military Wives.
● Functions and Mechanisms of Sleep.
Welcome back to part two of our discussion about mindfulness-based interventions. Last time, I shared some of my experiences of leading mindfulness groups for Veterans. I also introduced the concept of a Zen koan as a way of approaching the question, “should I be teaching Veterans to meditate?” In the second part of this blog, I will discuss some additional considerations you might want to make when deciding if you should offer mindfulness to your clients. Before we launch into that, did you do your homework? Have you spent some time sitting with your koan since the last blog? If so, feel free to write any questions or considerations that came up during your practice in the comments section.
I was trained in the Primary Care Behavioral Health Consultation model (PCBH; Robinson & Reiter, 2016) while I was a pre-doctoral clinical psychology resident (intern) in early 2007. As a young U.S. Air Force (USAF) officer and clinician, I found the primary care rotation to be exciting and exhausting. However, as a colleague of mine says, the primary care bug bit hard and I was hooked! I enjoyed the fast-paced generalist environment and the need to be prepared for anything. After graduation, I was fortunate to continue doing part-time PCBH work until I separated from the USAF in 2015. The USAF calls their PCBH program the Behavioral Health Optimization Program, a.k.a. BHOP (USAF, 2014). I BHOPped along for a few years until I was certified as an official “mentor” by Patti Robinson in 2011. For three years thereafter, I trained residents in BHOP. I truly had no idea that the skills I learned during my residency rotation would prove so valuable not just in primary care clinics, but also in a variety of other military settings, including the deployed environment.
34.1%
The percentage of soldiers deployed to Afghanistan in 2013 who "reported falling asleep on guard duty," according to an article published online before print in the journal Military Behavioral Health -- The Impact of Insufficient Sleep on Combat Mission Performance. The researchers indicate that this was "significantly associated with the number of hours of sleep per day."