Page 63 - JSOM Summer 2019

by Sandvik et al., who administered the DRS-15 to 21 Nor- measured in those participants and thus characterized resil-
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wegian sailors in simulated stress scenarios while measuring ience as being a team worker, having integrity, and demon-
neuropeptide-Y (NPY) levels corresponding to physiological strating persistence. Persistence and resilience were used as
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stress responses. Among participants with high scores of interchangeable constructs, though neither hardiness nor re-
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resilience, subscale scores of control, commitment, and chal- silience was actually named as a category nor as an elemental
lenge aligned with NPY measurements, whereas imbalanced construct in the list of available personality characteristics. 53
subscale scores of commitment, control, and challenge on the
DRS-15 corresponded with variances in NPY reactivity. 49 As reported by those authors, hardiness was not signifi-
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cantly associated with the three top-ranked personality char-
Using the DRS-15 as well, Bue et al. studied 252 active-duty acteristics, nor was hardiness as a specific construct actually
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Belgian soldiers’ resilience. Like Lee et al., Bue et al. found measured in the study, and resilient traits did not distinguish
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numbers of deployments were not significantly associated between successful and unsuccessful candidates. No psycho-
with resilience nor with cynicism, though resilience was asso- metric analysis of the list of personality characteristics was
ciated with dedication (positively) and cynicism (negatively). discussed, nor was hardiness as a construct or part of the list’s
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Resilience accounted for less than 20% of the variance in par- subscale discussed in the study. Gayton and Kehoe did not
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ticipants’ reported dedication and emotional exhaustion, and present any statistical analyses beyond descriptive calculations
less than 30% of the variance for vigor and cynicism. The of ratio data and percentages. The participant-driven results
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DRS-15 had an internal consistency of .78 in a study of 561 were then used by the authors in their 2016 article about the
American active-duty Soldiers in which Escolas et al. deter- character strengths of SF personnel and as framework by sev-
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mined hardiness did not significantly modify PTSD sympto- eral other researchers investigating resilience and “character
mology. Length of military service had stronger associations strengths.” 55–57 Participants in the original study ranked for-
with decreased PTSD symptoms than overall resilience had giveness lowest among all desirable traits, which conflicts with
with reducing PTSD symptom prevalence. 51 Hystad et al., who determined that forgiveness and tenden-
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cies to let go of resentment were key components of resilient
Resilience inferred from proxy measures behaviors.
In a longitudinal study of 280 active-duty American military
personnel and families, Lester et al. evaluated a resilience- Quasi-experimental military resilience research
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enhancement program (called “FOCUS”) delivered to US Neither referenced nor discussed in the Vyas et al. 2016
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Navy and Marine personnel. Participants were not specified as OSCAR-affiliated resilience research is a RAND study re-
SOF or conventional, though we presume FOCUS was avail- leased the year before by Vaughan et al., which we discov-
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able to Naval Special Warfare families. Measured constructs in ered during a hand search of the literature. In the Vaughan et
the Lester et al. study included parental distress, child distress, al. study, the OSCAR (operational stress control) program
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PTSD symptoms, and family adjustment. Other than α coef- of Vyas et al. was comprehensively evaluated by third-party
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ficients, the authors did not specifically discuss the psychomet- external investigators (i.e., RAND researchers) for efficacy.
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ric properties of the instruments used and did not report using Aside from Carr et al. studying resilience pre- and post-MRT,
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any instruments specific to measuring resilience. 52 Vaughn et al. had the only quasi-experimental comparative
study found in our searches of military resilience literature:
Lester et al. wrote at length about their program’s inter- 1,307 Marine participants were studied before and after de-
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vention and effects on distress and resilience, yet resilience in ployment and compared between those who received OSCAR
this population was not measured at baseline nor after com- training and those who did not. Study arms of Marines who
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pletion of the intervention program with any recognized or received OSCAR training reported higher help-seeking behav-
commonly used instrument that measures resilience. Those iors for stress than did non–OSCAR-trained participants. 58
investigators used four other instruments (the Brief Symptom
Inventory, PCL-M, Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire, However, Vaughan et al. found no evidence indicating
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and McMaster Family Assessment Device) of varying psycho- OSCAR had a positive distal impact on participants’ depres-
metric properties, but none is conceptually specific for mea- sion, PTSD, substance abuse, or stress coping. Indeed, Marines
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suring resilience. Lester et al. found that family adjustment in the OSCAR training group had more mental health issues
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measures predicted reduced distress and described some in- than did the control group. Those data were corroborated
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verse relationships between distress and program adherence, by other program metrics from which investigators inferred
but reported variance was less than 17%, and no measures no evidence fully indicated that resilience-building efforts of
used were vetted instruments in resilience research, though the OSCAR were effective. In fact, stigmatization of seeking help
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investigators stated the intervention program was specifically and tendencies toward psychiatric overdiagnoses were thought
designed to improve resilience. 52 to decrease Marines’ readiness and were main concerns voiced
by participants. Attempts to build resilience through OSCAR
Resilience defined by study participants initiatives had no demonstrable effect on PTSD, depression, or
In a 2015 study by Gayton and Kehoe, 95 Australian Special other desired outcomes. 58
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Forces candidates (described by the authors as a population
similar to US Army Rangers in scope) were asked to self-rank Mixed-methods military resilience research
character traits they believe align with resilience. Participants Scott et al. reported using a mixed-methods (e.g. combined
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did not report their own resilience via a psychometrically valid qualitative and quantitative) approach to their study of more
instrument; instead, they self-ranked personality traits the than 400 US Army National Guard participants. This study
authors designated for participants as “strong” characteris- was the only one in which we found SF participants at all; this
tics. The title of the article indicated hardiness (a synonym study had one SF Army National Guard participant and in-
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of resilience used often by non-American investigators) was vestigators included his narrative response in one paragraph.
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Resilience and Suicide in SOF | 61