Steve Wilson
Please join me in congratulating Steve Wilson, professor in the Brian Lamb School of Communication (BLSC), for receiving the 2016 Burkhart Award for Excellence in Research about Families from Purdue’s Center for Families.
Steve’s paper, “Dilemmas Families Face in Talking with Returning U.S. Military Service Members about Seeking Professional Help for Mental Health Issues,” was written with BLSC graduate student Patricia Gettings and BLSC colleagues Elizabeth Hall and Rebekah Pastor. In their study, 80 family members (such as spouses or parents) of military personnel who had been deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan reported how they would broach the topic of seeking help if their service member was having serious difficulty readjusting to civilian life. Family members described what they would try to accomplish by talking with their service member, reasons that person might resist seeking help, and advice they would give to other military families facing a similar situation. Analyses revealed several dilemmas that family members encountered related to military culture, societal stigmas about mental health, and cultural ideals about family communication. In addition to mapping dilemmas associated with encouraging service members to seek help, the authors also identified strategies that military family members recommended to manage those dilemmas.
Congratulations, Professor Wilson, on this recognition for your research by the Center for Families.
David A. Reingold
Justin S. Morrill Dean
College of Liberal Arts