Army Families

More troubled than most?

Growing up in a military family can be dangerous to your mental health.

So says Beaumont, Texas, Psychiatrist Don M. LaGrone. Writing in the American Journal of Psychiatry, LaGrone says that alcoholism is high in military families, child abuse is five times the national average, and Army brats are brought in for psychiatric treatment in unusually high numbers. During his two-year stint at an unidentified Midwestern military base, LaGrone reported, 12% of all children and adolescents on the base came to his clinic for psychiatric help. Of these, 4% were diagnosed as psychotic.

Military families are ripe for trouble, says the psychiatrist, because the father is absent much of the time, families see themselves as transients with no real roots, and wives and children are viewed as dependents, marginal to the all-male authoritarian structure of the military. Children move from school to school so frequently that "they have to break into peer groups repeatedly as the 'new kid' and are often the school's scapegoat." According to LaGrone, part of the problem is not the military's fault: the Army life attracts men from authoritarian families, who pass on harsh child-rearing behavior to their sons and daughters.

LaGrone's statistics may not reflect the problem fully. They do not include youngsters who were already in treatment when he arrived at the base. Also, he speculates that the number of patients would have been far greater if the pressure in officers' families against consulting psychiatrists were not so high. More than 94% of his patients came from the families of enlisted men, and the psychiatrist believes that officers' children could use at least as much help.

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