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OCR for page 67
Stress Reduction in Military Settings
Problems of stress, coping, ant adaptation are highly relevant to the
performance of military personnel. Military environments from recruit
training to conditions of warfare engender stress and require adaptive coping
skills to ensure optimum performance. Stress reduction strategies, therefore,
offer the prospect of enhanced performance under circumstances of adversity,
as well as promoting the health and well-being of military personnel.
The topics of stress, performance, and well-being are engaging not only
because they are prominent topics of contemporary psychological research, but
also because they have become preeminent concerns of work organizations. Many
volumes have appeared on the subject of occupational stress, which vary from
edited scholarly collections to practical guidebooks on how to cope with
stressful jobs. Moreover, abounding programs have been sold to corporate
industry on "stress management" (The Wall Street Journal, 1982).
Unfortunately, the many formulas offered for reducing job stress are much
stronger in marketing accomplishment than in substantive product. Yet, the
contemporary sensitization to stress is more than faddish self-indulgence by
our society. There is ample evidence linking occupational demands and
circumstances of strain to health impairments and performance decrements.
However, while much is also known about stress reduction, its programmatic
application in an organizational context presents multiple challenges.
The unique aspects of military life and the special characteristics of
military environments, such as recruit training and officer training, call for
careful thought in applying knowledge about stress and stress reduction.
Strategies and procedures that are appropriate for civilian life may not at
all- be feasible or useful in military contexts. For example, tension
OCR for page 68
Stress Reduction 2
reduction methods, such as deep muscle relaxation (which has a distinct effect
in lowering blood pressure), have limited, if any, utility for recruits in
boot camp. Recruits, who have virtually every minute of the day programmed
and very little privacy at any time, do not have the opportunity to engage in
muscle relaxation procedures. Similarly, a principal means of stress
reduction is to limit one's exposure to environmental demands. Recruits,
however, have little control over the demands placed upon them and furthermore
have a narrow range of behavioral options for responding to those demands.
Such constraining conditions in training environments do not only affect
recruits. The duty requirements for drill instructors and unit officers will
curtail the extension of stress reduction strategies that are otherwise useful
for civilians. This is not to say that methods of tension reduction have no
applicability, to clarify the point of this example. Indeed, they may be
quite valuable. But instead of muscle relaxation, hypnosis, or biofeedback
procedures, something more suitable to the context and population must be
formulated. This might involve training groups how to self-monitor
physiological arousal and disruptive emotion, combined with their physical
fitness routine and supplemented with deep breathing and usual imagery
methods.
Although we know a considerable amount about the determinants of stress
and a fair amount about how to remediate stress (the causal processes do
remain a puzzle), the implementation of interventions in a complex
organization with idiosyncratic characteristics requires recognition of the
circumstances that will limit the utilization of the advocated procedures.
When it can be recognized that behavioral coping options are restricted, as
they surely are in military organizations and on military missions, then
emphasis must be placed on cognitive coping strategies. Likewise, when it can
OCR for page 69
Stress Reduction 3
be determined that modifiable factors in the social environments of
organizational units have powerful stress-inducing effects, it is not prudent
to rely on person-based, intrapsychic stress reduction approaches.
The organizational mission of the military is combat. That, of course,
involves stressful conditions. Consequently, it might seem odd to suggest
that stress be lowered for military personnel in their training. A critic
here might ask, show can soldiers be prepared for combat if they do not know
how to deal with stress, and how can they learn how to deal with stress if
they are not exposed to it?" The succinct reply involves a conceptual
clarification, namely that stress can be understood as a state of imbalance
between environmental demands and resources for coping. Therefore, stress can
be mitigated by augmenting coping skills. When environmental demands or
pressures are a given inevitability, stress can be reduced nonetheless by
enhancing the person's cognitive, behavioral, and social resources for coping
with the stressors.
An overview of the stress field and an elaboration of the above concept
will be set forth in the next section, which will discuss determinants and
mediators of stress in environmental, cognitive, behavioral, and social
domains. Given the scope of this paper, coverage of these areas will
necessarily be abbreviated. The aim will be to provide a basic conceptual
background for what is to be presented on stress diagnostic procedures, stress
reduction, and prospects for implementation in military se~ctings.
OVERVIEW OF THE STRESS FIELD
Contemporary research on human stress tracks a number of main areas of
investigation, these being (a) conditions of the physical and social
environment that function as stressors, (b) stressful life events and the
Representative terms from entire chapter:
reduction strategies
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