Page 53 - Biobehavioral Resilence to Stress

30 Biobehavorial Resilience to Stress

or psychiatric disorders (Department of Defense, 2001). Simply put, stress
control is intended to promote the ability of service members to cope with
the potentially damaging eff ects of combat.
As part of COSC doctrine, the U.S. Army has developed a system to
classify combat and operational stress reactions (COSRs). Under this system,

stress reactions are classified as either adaptive or maladaptive. Adaptive
stress reactions are characterized as reactions that enhance individual and

unit performance. Benefits might include improved cohesiveness, morale,

responsibility, courage, and strength. In effect, adaptive reactions are those
that demonstrate resilience to stress at the individual or unit level. Th ey are
attributed as the result of “physiological stress response, together with other
individual factors (such as personality and training) and social/ environmental
factors (such as good leadership and peer relationships)” (Department of the
Army, 2006).
Maladaptive stress reactions, which may be transient or persistent, include
misconduct or behavioral disorders (e.g., depression or anxiety) that develop
or are exacerbated as the result of deployment or combat stress. Stress-related
misconduct is usually characterized by rule breaking or criminal behavior
and may include behavior such as mutilating enemy dead, killing enemy pris-
oners, killing noncombatants, torture, alcohol and drug abuse, recklessness,

indiscipline, looting, malingering, self-inflicted injury, killing their own
leaders (“fragging”), or desertion (Department of the Army, 2006).

Prevention and Preparation through Training

COSC doctrinal objectives are now also addressed explicitly or implicitly as
part of basic military training, as personnel are presented with new chal-
lenges and must learn to accommodate and adapt to stress. Basic training
emphasizes the need for physical, technical, and situational readiness, and
psychological resilience can be seen as a positive collateral outcome of these
objectives. Basic and other military training also fosters a strong sense of
unit cohesion, mental and physical toughness, leadership development, and
rapid situation assessment skills, all of which are encapsulated in the con-
struct known as “warrior ethos” (Department of the Army, 1999).
The process of training an individual to become a military service

member, and to serve as part of a working team, inculcates a set of beliefs
and values that form the basis for a cohesive sense of the self, an apprecia-
tion for the meaning of one’s work, and knowledge of one’s purpose in the
context of a larger organization. This training promotes a strong sense of

esprit de corps, which is at least anecdotally correlated with adaptability
and, ultimately, survivability (Department of the Army, 2006). Moreover,
the military correlates of social support (morale, cohesion) and individual

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