Tag

family counseling

Browsing

Counseling Can Help Strengthen the Family Unit

By
family unit

By Leischen Stelter, editor of In Public Safety

Police officers, firefighters, and EMTs regularly experience high levels of stress and trauma. These experiences not only impact their own mental health, but can be detrimental to the wellbeing of the entire family unit.

[Related: How Children of First Responders Can Benefit from Counseling]

On this episode of In Public Safety Matters, learn about the unique challenges first responder families face and how they can benefit from professional counseling. Joining the conversation is American Military University professor Dr. Marie Isom who has extensive experience providing both child and family counseling.

Dr. Isom explains how counseling can strengthen the family unit by enhancing communication, teaching coping mechanisms, building problem-solving skills, and more. She also shares what a family should look for in a counselor, the importance of remaining open-minded, and how to create goals for counseling.

Listen to the full podcast here:

Keep Reading
By

Daddy’s Home! Helping Your Child Adjust to Post-Deployment Stress

By

By Dr. Nancy Heath and Dr. Kimberlee Ratliff
Dr. Heath is the Program Director for Human Development and Family Studies at APU.
Dr. Ratliff is the Program Director of the M.Ed. in School Counseling at APU.

Families experience enormous amounts of stress when one parent goes off to war. Rules and boundaries change, chores may be divided up differently, and loyalties are renegotiated. As the reality of a partner’s deployment sinks in, the remaining parent may find it hard to function, since he or she is suffering a significant upheaval and loss of support. Eventually, though, most non-deployed parents find ways to cope. They learn new skills, find new social groups, and establish new routines. Yet most eagerly await the return of their partner, and children, especially, look forward to a return to normalcy.