Skills and Sensitivities

Imagine how you might respond if you were the helping professional working with the clients who made the following statements:

• “How do you know what I feel? Have you ever picked up a weapon?”
• “Do you know what it is like to kill someone?”
• “I’m missing two legs. It makes me half a soldier. Don’t you get that?”
• “My husband is not the same. What happened to him over there? He won’t talk to me anymore. I’m scared.”

As a helping professional, how do you begin to talk to military personnel about their war and combat experience? What approaches, skills, and sensitivities do you need to work with this population?

In Discussion 1, you considered the impact of war and combat on military personnel. In this Discussion, you consider the skills and sensitivities that you, as a helping professional, need to support and work with military personnel. A helping professional’s training is extensive. Most training programs require you to complete a self-assessment of the skills and sensitivities you need to work in the field. Training to work with military personnel is no different.

To prepare for this Discussion, review the media in the resources, and select one interviewee to address. Analyze the interviewee’s war and combat experience and consider the skills and sensitivities you would need if you were the helping professional assigned to treat this service member.

Post 1.an explanation of the skills and sensitivities you would need to possess if you were to talk about the personal effects of war and combat with the individual in the interview you selected. 

2. Describe one skill or sensitivity you might need to develop or enhance in order to work effectively with military personnel who experienced war or combat.

3. Finally, explain how you might develop these skills. (2-3 pages)

Be sure to support your post with specific references to the resources. If you are using additional articles, be sure to provide full APA-formatted citations for your references.

Required Readings

Blaisure, K. R., Saathoff-Wells, T., Pereira, A., MacDermid Wadsworth, S., & Dombro, A. L. (2016). Serving military families (2nd ed.). New York: NY: Routledge.
Chapter 7, “The Effects of War on Service Members” (pp. 161-179)
Chapter 8, “The Effects of War on Families” (pp. 181-210)

Khamis, V. (2017). Psychological distress of parents in conflict areas: The mediating role of war atrocities, normative stressors and family resources. Journal of Mental Health, 26(2), 104-110.

Schryver, M., eVindevogel, S., Rasmussen, A.E., & Cramer, A.O.J. (2015). Unpacking constructs: A network approach for studying war exposure, daily stressors and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Frontiers in Psychology, 6, 1896.