Volume_4_Issue_2_Digest

TPC D igest 23 Kristin A. Vincenzes, NCC, is an Assistant Professor and Director of the Clinical Mental Health Counseling program at Lock Haven University. Laura Haddock, NCC, is a Core Faculty member and CES Program Coordinator at Walden University. Gregory Hickman is a Core Faculty member at Walden University. Correspondence can be addressed to Kristin A. Vincenzes, 401 N. Fairview Street, Courthouse Annex Room 301, Lock Haven, PA, 17745, KAV813@lhup.edu . F rom 2001–2012, the U.S. government sent 2.4 million soldiers to Iraq and Af- ghanistan. According to Demers, deploy- ments affected not only the soldiers’ lives, but also the lives of their stay-behind wives (over half of U.S. soldiers reported being married). The purpose of the current research was to examine Bowlby’s and Ainsworth’s attach- ment theories—specifically separation anxi- ety—and its application to the experiences of military wives. Robertson and Bowlby further discussed the idea of separation anxiety and posited that an infant experiences three phases when separated from its mother: protest, de- spair, and denial or detachment. These phases of separation anxiety may be assimilated to the attachment issues that military wives experi- ence throughout the stages of deployment. The first stage of separation anxiety, protest, could be linked to the stages of pre-deploy- ment and deployment when the wives may feel numb, angry and abandoned due to the separa- tion. The second phase of separation anxiety, despair, could be assimilated to the grief and mourning the wives experience during deploy- ment. Finally, military wives could experience denial and detachment during both deployment The Implications of Attachment Theory for Military Wives: Effects During a Post- Deployment Period – DIGEST Kristin A. Vincenzes Laura Haddock Gregory Hickman