2, 4–6 These problems could reflect the effects of child-parent separation, the adverse effects of deployment on parental relationships, or the results of significant psychological harms experienced by some veterans of war, including anxiety, depression, substance abuse and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). 1–4 Young children of deployed parents experience more anxiety and depression than their peers and indicate greater psychological distress while their parents are deployed and in the months and years immediately following their return from service. The effects of military deployment on the mental health of veterans have been investigated extensively, but relatively few studies have examined how it affects their children. There are significant and enduring adverse effects of parental military deployment on the mental health of children. the previous 12 months and the past 4 weeks). These differences in mental health were apparent over the lifespan and in the recent past (i.e. Their self-reported current mental health was also poorer. The adult children of the deployed veterans were more likely to have been diagnosed with anxiety and depression and more likely to have had thoughts of suicide and self-harm than the offspring of comparable, non-deployed ex-army personnel. We controlled for pre-deployment differences between the deployed and non-deployed men using propensity score analysis and adjusted for the age, sex, marital status, educational attainment and employment status of their children. deployed veterans) with men and women whose fathers served in the Australian army in the same era, but who were not deployed to Vietnam (i.e.
We compared the adult children of Australian army veterans who were deployed to the Vietnam War (i.e.