Abstract
Objective
To understand the facilitators and barriers to community reintegration (CR) among
injured female veterans.
Design
Phenomenologic qualitative design.
Setting
Community.
Participants
Community-dwelling female veterans with physical and/or psychological injury (N=13).
Interventions
None.
Main Outcome Measures
None.
Results
Conventional content analysis revealed 3 types of facilitators, including (1) strong
social support, (2) impactful programs, and (3) protective personal beliefs. Six types
of barriers included (1) inadequate services, (2) lack of access to services, (3)
poor social support, (4) difficulty trusting others, (5) nonsupportive personal beliefs,
and (6) injury factors. Multiple environmental and personal factors acted as facilitators
and barriers to CR. Findings are relatively consistent with previous veteran and civilian
community reintegration research that indicates the importance of health-related services,
attitudes of others, and social support. However, women in this study reported being
effected by many of these facilitators and barriers because of their sex.
Conclusions
This study supports the need to foster social support among injured female veterans
throughout the rehabilitation process to promote CR. Long-term social support can
be gained by incorporating services (eg, adjunctive therapies, recreation, other social
programming) into the rehabilitation repertoire to help with CR for all veterans,
particularly women.
Keywords
List of abbreviations:
CR (community reintegration), MST (military sexual trauma), PTSD (posttraumatic stress disorder), VHA (Veterans Health Administration)To read this article in full you will need to make a payment
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Article Info
Publication History
Published online: August 30, 2017
Footnotes
Supported by a Clemson University Office of Sponsored Programs University Research Grant Committee Award.
Publication of this article was supported by the American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine.
Disclosures: none.
Identification
Copyright
© 2017 by the American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine
