Army major studies resiliency of military personnel

Maj. Kenneth Harris III’s grandfather was a veteran of the Korean War. His uncle served in the Vietnam War, and his father is an Army veteran. Harris recalls memories of playing basketball at a nearby gym with service members and attending church with active-duty personnel as a teenager.

So it’s not a big surprise that Harris became a U.S. Army officer himself. Harris deployed as a scout platoon leader in support of Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan in 2013 and later served in South Korea and Poland. He saw firsthand the challenges faced by military members not only in combat situations, but also while training out in the field.

Now a doctoral student at the UNC School of Social Work, Harris focuses his research on the mental health and psychological resilience among active-duty military personnel and their families. He recently published an article on resiliency among U.S. Air Force personnel in Military Psychology. His co-authors are Gary Bowen, dean emeritus of the UNC School of Social Work, and assistant professor Todd Jensen of the UNC School of Education.

“I was most impressed with Kenny’s competency in generating a practice-based research question and using an appropriate data set and advanced statistics to test a working hypothesis from a thorough review of the literature,” Bowen said. “This article demonstrates an effective integration of theory, research and practice with important implications for practitioners who work with active-duty military members. It was a pleasure working with Kenny as a co-author—he provided excellent leadership and persistence in completing the many tasks associated with publishing an article in a peer-review journal.”

From his experience as a social worker meeting one-on-one with service members, Harris was interested in examining mental health among military personnel, as well as the social determinants of health.

The three-person team found that junior enlisted service members reported the highest levels of resiliency compared to their peers. Conversely, junior officers — young leaders with at least a bachelor’s degree — were the active-duty members experiencing the most challenges in meeting both personal and professional expectations.

“As an officer myself, I was wondering, ‘What is that about?’” Harris said.

Harris and his co-authors theorized that the findings were related to the job responsibilities of those surveyed. Junior service members often don’t have the same level of expectations as that of officers, and seeing that perspective resonated with Harris.

“We have to do a better job, in my opinion, of targeting junior officers who might be having challenges that we may not know about because they’re not open about it because they’re in leadership roles,” he said.

Other findings highlighted the importance of social support resources for active-duty personnel. Strong informal social support, including family, friends and peers, was associated with improved levels of resiliency for service members in a way that formal support systems were not.

“These formal systems are great, but, at the end of the day, if we’re trying to reach the most people to have an influence on them and help them experience well-being and perform their roles effectively, it’s important to target these informal social support type resources,” Harris said.

Harris believes that the information contained in the data set will help him in future work.

“As social workers, we want to help people who are experiencing different challenges and give voice to their experiences so we can come up with programs and initiatives that help those folks,” Harris said. “This is opening the door to that.”

Read more about Harris’ research.