WITHDRAWN: Can Military Service Have a Long-Lasting Impact on Women Veterans' Mental Health Leading to Higher Unemployment Rates?

Background/Purpose:

Women veterans face high risks of their military service having negative impacts on their mental wellbeing due to combat exposure over multiple deployments, military sexual trauma, and other daily stressors from the military lifestyle (Hassija, Jakupcak, Maguen, & Shipherd, 2012; Koo & Maguen, 2014). Women veterans are more likely than their male counterparts to report mental health concerns (Thomas et al., 2016).

Women veterans are typically more educated than male veterans, but are unemployed at similar or higher rates than both male veterans and women non-veterans (Nanda et al., 2016; Hamilton, Williams, & Washington, 2015). It can be cyclic for women veterans who are unable to maintain stable employment due to mental health difficulties, whose mental health can worsen due to being unemployed (McDaniel, Thomas, Albright, Fletcher, & Shields, 2018; Hamilton, Williams, & Washington, 2015).

This study focuses on exploring the following questions: Does the impact of military service on mental health of women veterans affect their ongoing mental health? Additionally, does the mental wellbeing of women veterans affect their employment status?

Methods:

Drawing upon data from the Service Women’s Action Network’s (SWAN) 2017 needs assessment survey, this study includes 1,294 current or former women U.S. Armed Forces service members throughout the 50 states and the District of Columbia.

A logistic regression model was used to answer the following question: Is there a relationship between the military’s impact on women service members’ mental health and their ongoing poor mental health days and employment status and poor mental health days in women veterans?  For this study, a two-model logistic regression method was utilized with (1) dependent variable being mental health status and (2) dependent variable being employment status.

Results:

Addressing the first research question, results show that women veterans who report their military service had a negative impact on their mental health had 8.744 higher odds of reporting more than 10 days of poor mental health compared to those who report their military service had a positive or neutral impact on their mental health. Other demographic variables were also associated with higher odds of poor mental health, sexual minority status (OR=1.481), current service status (OR=1.995), and rank (OR=1.741). Relating to the second question, findings indicated that women veterans reporting more than 10 days (in the last 30 days) of poor mental health had 2.246 times higher odds of unemployment than those who reported fewer than 10 days of poor mental health with current service status and the impact of military service on mental health both increased women’s odds of unemployment.

Conclusions and Implications:

Key findings echo existing literature showing that women are often negatively affected by their military service and furthermore, that poor mental health can affect their employment status. Moreover, findings suggest that this negative impact on mental health can carry beyond time served in the military, negatively impacting employment status. Unemployment among women veterans is a substantial issue and by understanding that mental health status can affect this and how community practitioners can better assist women veterans.