Military Parent’s PTSD and Children’s Mental Health: A Scoping Review

It is widely recognized that the mental health of parents impacts children’s well-being. A scoping review was conducted to examine what was known from the research specific to mental health issues facing children as a consequence of their military parent’s PTSD. The parameters of this review were based on Arksey and O’Malley’s (2005) recommendations for completion of a scoping review. From the search, 163 articles were located from 5 electronic databases. Of those, 35 were related to the topic and, after implementing the inclusion and exclusion criteria 21 were included in this scoping review. Although the scoping review demonstrated that there is a paucity of knowledge about the impact of military member’s PTSD on children’s mental health, all of the articles discovered for this review concluded that there were mental health impacts on children as a result of residing with a military parent diagnosed with PTSD. As a result, not only is more research needed on the phenomena, the research that is prevalent suggests that more treatment and prevention services be provided to military members, their families and their children