Children of parents with military backgrounds are more likely to consume alcohol or misuse prescription drugs, reveals a new study by University of Iowa.
According to previous studies, children of parents with multiple deployments had higher levels of depression and were prone to suicide. But the latest study focuses on alcohol and drug use, lead author of the study, Stephan Arndt said to Reuters Health.
"What was sort of surprising to me was that I had expected those effects for high school (students), but we saw it in sixth graders too," said Arndt, a psychiatry researcher at the University of Iowa.
Data was collected of Iowa students in 2010 for the study, when 1.2 million parents of teen and preteens had active duty in the military. The researchers assessed the data of 1, 700 children of deployed parents with 57, 000 children whose parents were from non-military background. This data included sixth and eleventh graders both.
The study revealed that 12 percent of the sixth graders of military parents had consumed alcohol and 7 percent guzzled five or more drinks in one sitting. The children of parents with non-military background amounted only to four and two percent, respectively.
Among the older children that is 11th graders, 29 percent with military parents had alcohol in the past month and 15 percent smoked pot compared to 22 percent and 10 percent of non-military parents' children.
The research, in the journal Addiction, stated that 15 percent of all children and teenagers with military parents had misused prescription drugs last month compared to 7 percent of children with non-military background families.
This study largely included Army Reserve and National Guard families in Iowa; with parents who would had worked civilian jobs before deployment and whose families didn't live on military bases, reported Reuters.
"This research just adds further to the mounting evidence that there are negative mental health effects on children associated with parental military deployment," Dr Timothy Shope, a pediatrician at Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh, told Reuters Health.
Children with parents in the services may be most susceptible to the turmoil of deployment, Dr Shope pointed. Dr Shope served for 21 years in the Navy before retiring in 2011.
Dr Shope further explained that when military personnel are on bases there is built-in support system as well as other military families who help each other during deployment. However, families of those deployed in Army Reserve and National Guard are deprived of these resources.
Disturbed living patterns tend to cause turmoil in children's lives and especially if these children are not living with a parent or known relative then substance abuse increases in such cases.
"I think community service agencies, military service agencies and schools should put something in place that adds support to the children and the rest of the family left behind," Reuters Health quoted the lead author of the study Arndt as saying.
