TPC Journal Volume 11 Issue 2

The Professional Counselor | Volume 11, Issue 2 209 getting treatment or that their problems [are] not as important.” Finally, a spouse explained that there is a “weird mentality, I think, in the military spouse community, where you don’t complain because someone else has it worse. . . . If you’re an Air Force spouse, maybe the Army deployments are longer, so you just don’t want to complain.” Theme 3: Fear of Seeking Mental Health Services Despite these challenges that military spouses face, eight of the participants described a fear of seeking out mental health services. Five of the participants, for example, said that spouses fear appearing to be unstable or, as one spouse described, a “fear of being ostracized, or the fear of having people talk behind your back, or embarrassment.” One spouse explained how mental health issues are viewed as, “Oh, she was a crazy spouse. Oh, she got everything that she needed . . . so she was just kind of crazy.” Another participant described how a spouse was viewed after verbalizing her mental health struggles: “I’ve been told by other spouses not to go hang out with her in group settings because she’s batshit crazy.” One spouse noted that “there’s still that stigma of reaching out and being known to have the mental health issue.” Finally, spouses may fear being honest with their medical providers for this same reason. One participant described her own perception of this fear of being transparent with the doctor regarding a suicidal assessment: “If you answer it honestly, sometimes you’re like ‘They’re going to put me in a padded room if I really tell you what my last 2 weeks has been like.’” In addition to appearing unstable, seven of the participants described how military spouses fear that seeking mental health services would negatively impact or bring “backlash” on their service member’s career. One participant noted: “People keep it quiet because they don’t want their spouse, their military member, to not get promoted or not get more responsibility and stuff like that because they’re not keeping it together.” Another participant stated that often “you run into people who are kind of skittish about going just because of the stigma.” She further explained that “you don’t want to hurt your husband’s career, and that’s what you’ve heard for a long time. He looks like he can’t handle the situations at home.’” Theme 4: Difficulty Accessing Mental Health Services Spouses who do decide to seek help for their mental health may experience difficulties in securing an appointment, as described by six of the participants in this study. Each of these spouses expressed difficulties with finding a mental health provider in the community or accessing mental health treatment at a military facility. One participant explained that “the reality is they can’t guarantee that the local community and local providers will be able to provide everything we need when we need it.” Another spouse expressed frustration that “TRICARE can sometimes be a pain when you’re trying to schedule something, and it will make you schedule at 6 weeks out because that’s the first available.” One participant described her experience with trying to find a counselor covered by TRICARE. She stated, “You hope that you get an appointment and hope you can jive with whoever you called because you may have to wait another month or two to try to find someone else.” Three spouses in the study also expressed concern about the consistency of care due to frequent relocations. One participant explained the need to streamline mental health services at each duty station “so that if [spouses] are seeing a psychiatrist in one place and they go to the next place, they’re not waiting for 2 or 3 months before they can get in to see a new psychiatrist.” Five of the study’s participants also expressed concern over not having access to a mental health specialist. For example, one spouse shared that “the person I did see, who was a social worker, I just don’t feel was very equipped to talk to me about the things I wanted to talk about.” Another spouse described her perception of military family life consultants’ work with spouses on military bases: