Comprehensive soldier fitness: A vision for psychological resilience in the U.S. Army.

The stress and strain on the U.S. Army's community due to nearly a decade of protracted war is well documented in the press and in scientific literature. In response, the Army's Comprehensive Soldier Fitness (CSF) program is a preventive program that seeks to enhance psychological resilience among all members of the Army community, which includes soldiers, family members, and Department of the Army civilians. CSF is not a medical treatment program. Rather, CSF helps those community members who are psychologically healthy face life's adversities—including combat and prolonged separation from loved ones—by providing evidence-based training. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Comprehensive Soldier Fitness: Building resilience in a challenging institutional context.

The Comprehensive Soldier Fitness (CSF) program is designed to increase psychological strength and positive performance and to reduce the incidence of maladaptive responses of the entire U.S. Army. Based on the principles of positive psychology, CSF is a historically unique approach to behavioral health in a large (1.1 million members) organization. There are four program elements: (a) the assessment of emotional, social, family, and spiritual fitness; (b) individualized learning modules to improve fitness in these domains; (c) formal resilience training; and (d) training of Army master resilience trainers (MRTs) to instill better thinking skills and resilience in their subordinates. In contrast to traditional approaches, CSF is proactive; rather than waiting to see who has a negative outcome following stress, it provides ways of improving resilience for all members of the Army. CSF aims to move the full spectrum of responses to trauma and adversity—ranging from stress-related disorders to ordinary resilience—toward personal growth. This program may provide a model for implementing similar interventions in other very large institutions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Bringing science to bear: An empirical assessment of the Comprehensive Soldier Fitness program.

This article outlines the U.S. Army's effort to empirically validate and assess the Comprehensive Soldier Fitness (CSF) program. The empirical assessment includes four major components. First, the CSF scientific staff is currently conducting a longitudinal study to determine if the Master Resilience Training program and the Comprehensive Resilience Modules lead to lasting resilience development in soldiers. Second, the CSF program has partnered with other researchers to conduct a series of longitudinal studies examining the link between physiological, neurobiological, and psychological resilience factors. Third, the CSF program is also incorporating institutional-level data to determine if its material influences health, behavioral, and career outcomes. Fourth, group randomized trials are being conducted to ensure that resilience training incorporated under the CSF program is effective with soldiers. A specific rationale and methodologies are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Building spiritual fitness in the Army: An innovative approach to a vital aspect of human development.

This article describes the development of the spiritual fitness component of the Army's Comprehensive Soldier Fitness (CSF) program. Spirituality is defined in the human sense as the journey people take to discover and realize their essential selves and higher order aspirations. Several theoretically and empirically based reasons are articulated for why spirituality is a necessary component of the CSF program: Human spirituality is a significant motivating force, spirituality is a vital resource for human development, and spirituality is a source of struggle that can lead to growth or decline. A conceptual model developed by Sweeney, Hannah, and Snider (2007) is used to identify several psychological structures and processes that facilitate the development of the human spirit. From this model, an educational, computer-based program has been developed to promote spiritual resilience. This program consists of three tiers: (a) building awareness of the self and the human spirit, (b) building awareness of resources to cultivate the human spirit, and (c) building awareness of the human spirit of others. Further research will be needed to evaluate the effectiveness of this innovative and potentially important program. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Assessment for the U.S. Army Comprehensive Soldier Fitness program: The Global Assessment Tool.

Psychology and the U.S. military have a long history of collaboration. The U.S. Army Comprehensive Soldier Fitness (CSF) program aims to measure the psychosocial strengths and assets of soldiers as well as their problems, to identify those in need of basic training in a given domain as well as those who would benefit from advanced training, and then to provide that training. The goals of the CSF program include the promotion of well-being as well as the prevention of problems. Assessment is the linchpin of the CSF program, and the Global Assessment Tool (GAT) is a self-report survey that measures psychosocial fitness in emotional, social, family, and spiritual domains. We review the history of psychological assessment in the military and the lessons taught by this history. Then we describe the process by which the GAT was developed and evaluated. We conclude with a discussion of pending next steps in the development and use of the GAT. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Positive Tertiary Appraisals and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder in U.S. Male Veterans of the War in Vietnam: The Roles of Positive Affirmation, Positive Reformulation, and Defensive Denial.

A 70.9% majority of the U.S. male veterans in a nationwide sample appraised the impact of their service in Vietnam on their present lives as mainly positive. A substantial minority, 41.7%, judged the effects to be highly salient. With controls on level of exposure to war-zone stressors measured with data from military records, the valence and salience of these appraisals are investigated in relation to posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other indicators of wartime and postwar functioning. The results are consistent with the hypothesis that mainly positive tertiary appraisals are affirmations of successful wartime and postwar adaptation rather than defensive denials related to maladaptive outcomes. The possibility that mainly positive tertiary appraisals also contribute to successful postwar adaptation is discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)