TPC Journal Volume 11 Issue 2

The Professional Counselor | Volume 11, Issue 2 211 that when you move somewhere new there should be someone checking to make sure you’re okay and you’re not alone all the time. I think it’s the military’s responsibility to make sure there’s a process in place.” Another spouse proposed this check-in process as being “part of the standard procedure to make sure the spouse maybe is brought in and made aware of all of the programs that are available to them.” Discussion In this study, all of the military spouse participants described how spouses’ loss of control and loss of identity may contribute to their increased risk for suicide. These feelings resulted from continually moving to new duty stations (often unexpectedly), being isolated and separated from their support systems, fearing for their spouse’s safety during deployments, and struggling to maintain a sense of self and a career while making their families and the military their priority. Although they were committed to prioritizing the military lifestyle and their spouses’ career, these spouses did not feel that their needs were prioritized by the military in turn. Each of these challenges for military spouses has been previously addressed in the professional literature (Eaton et al., 2008; Lewy et al., 2014; Mailey et al., 2018), although their direct correlation to suicidality has not yet been explored. Because increased levels of suicidality have been found in other populations when social isolation increases (Calati et al., 2019; Heuser & Howe, 2019; Pompili et al., 2007) or stressful life transitions or events occur (Oquendo et al., 2014; Paul, 2018), it is important to continue to consider how these risk factors impact military spouses’ suicidality. Most of the participants likewise described the tendency of spouses to feel guilty for suffering, as they are not the ones on the battlefield, a new phenomenon not yet explored in the professional literature. One participant concluded that these feelings of guilt may lead to spouses feeling they are unworthy of using mental health resources intended for active-duty service members. To address these feelings of guilt, one spouse described the need to normalize the conversation about mental health among spouses, which would ameliorate these feelings of unworthiness and increase spouses’ use of resources. Finally, all of the participants felt that provision and advertisement of mental health and suicide prevention programs and services specifically for spouses would help them feel more confident in utilizing these services. When speaking about risk factors associated with suicide, most spouses described their fears of the stigma associated with accessing mental health services and the struggles associated with finding mental health providers qualified to help them when they did decide to seek help. These fears and struggles directly correspond to results in past quantitative and mixed-methods research regarding barriers to treating military spouse mental health (Eaton et al., 2008; Lewy et al., 2014). The participants in this study likewise described their frustration with not being able to get an appointment with military or community providers. These struggles echo the results of previous research describing the challenges of spouses to access mental health services (Lewy et al., 2014), highlighting the consistency of this issue. Although the participants’ struggles with mental health and mental health providers confirm the findings of existing studies, their suggestions for preventing suicide within the military spouse community are new ideas generated from this study. Primarily, the participants focused on the community itself as a protective factor against suicide. They described how building a strong spousal community prevents feelings of isolation, as spouses can care for each other because they share common experiences of the military lifestyle. This sense of connection is especially important, as spouses are separated from their support systems when relocating from one duty station to the