MEDIA HIGHLIGHTS

Dr. Kayla Reed-Fitzke, Assistant Professor of Couple and Family Therapy at the University of Iowa, was interviewed by The Gazette. Reed-Fitzke discussed how emerging adults who may be having to shelter at home, alone or with roommates, can navigate stress during the pandemic.

Dr. James Duncan, a Content Expert Research Team Member for Military Research & Outreach (Military REACH headquartered @ Auburn University), has published a family focus article that describes his ‘life after deployment’ while also connecting relevant scholarly research to his own life experiences.

New research published be Dr. James Duncan, Dr. Kayla Reed-Fitzke, Dr. Anthony Ferraro and co-authors was recently released by Military Medicine the official journal for the Association of Military Surgeons of the United States the Society of Federal Health Professionals. The research titled “Identifying Risk and Resilience Factors Associated with the Likelihood of Seeking Mental Health Care Among U.S. Army Soldiers-in-Training” can be found at Military Medicine and looked at identifying indicators of ill-being and well-being before soldiers have been in their military career long enough to experience major life changes such as military deployment. Data came from The Army Study to Assess Risk and Resilience in Servicemembers (Army STARRS) and examined army soldiers-in-training.      

This year all leadership of the FRIENDS of the Tallgrass (Dr. James Duncan, Dr. Kayla Reed-Fitzke, & Dr. Anthony Ferraro) presented a shared symposium session related to military families across the lifespan in Fort Worth Texas at the 2019 annual meeting of the National Council on Family Relations. Topics varied from identifying risk factors among early career soldiers to identifying resilience factors among older adult veterans. Dr. Duncan chaired the session, Tallgrass FRIEND from another region Dr. Christina Marini served as the session’s discussant, and doctoral candidate Hilary Dalton Pippert working under the guidance of Dr. Ferraro also presented research. Check out the provided link to get more information about the annual conference and check out the “featured research page” to look at an overview of the symposium project and how all symposium presentations from the FRIENDS of the Tallgrass team interconnected to promote research on individual and family well-being among various military populations. 

The goals of the award are to: bring visibility to issues of military and veteran families generally, and to outstanding new research specifically; increase the impact of rigorous scientific evidence on programs, policies and practices affecting military and veteran families; strengthen connections between researchers and practitioners interested in military and veteran families; and raise awareness of research on military and veteran families across many disciplines. 

Dr. Duncan, Dr. Reed-Fitzke, and Dr. Ferraro recently presented research on data associated with treatment seeking among service members from the Army STARRS dataset in Austin, Texas at the annual conference of the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapy. The presentation was highlighted by the Southeastern Council on Family Relations and featured on Facebook by the National Council of Family Relations.

This featured discussion talks about helicopter parenting and cites Dr. Reed-Fitzke’s, Dr. Duncan’s, & Dr. Ferraro’s 2016 peer reviewed article on the topic from the “Journal of Child and Family Studies.”

Our Town Our Kids (Producer). (2019). Importance of co-parenting: An interview with Dr. Anthony Ferraro [Digital media]. (Available from Our Town Our Kids, 1603 Old Claflin Rd., Manhattan, KS 66506).

UI education Assistant Professor Kayla Reed-Fitzke applies research on adverse childhood experiences to provide early career service members at risk for mental-health issues with early help and support.

James Duncan, an adjunct professor in the University of Arkansas School of Human Environmental Sciences, has received a Society for Military Psychology Member/Affiliate Research Grant to conduct research into how to help at-risk soldiers get the support needed to be safe and successful early in their careers. The $2,500 grant will help fund the research project, “Identifying At-Risk U.S. Army Soldiers: A Person-Centered Approach to Adverse Childhood Experiences.”

Writing in the Journal of Human Sciences and Extension, Duncan and faculty collaborators from three other universities report that “social support” can have a meaningful impact on how emerging adults handle perceptions of task overload. This study specifically looked at college adults up to the age of 25 that are becoming independent and learning how to handle multiple tasks, for example, school work and job responsibilities, during the transition to college and how lack of social support may affect their mental health and ultimately perceptions of task overload.

As clinicians and practitioners working with families, it is our responsibility to understand the unique and often complex contexts in which the individuals and families we serve exist.  Families have become only more complex over time.  In particular, the qualities and circumstances which define stepfamilies have changed greatly over time. In this article Anthony Ferraro was invited to lead a brief report about stepfamilies for the Newsletter for Certified Family Life Educators of the National Council on Family Relations.