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Managing the stress of parenting
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Posted on Jul 19 2023
Maj. Caleb Ra, a clinical social worker with the 1835th Med. Det. (COSC), from Aurora, Co., and Maj. Bradley Smith, a psychiatric nurse practitioner with the 467th Med. Det. Combat Operational Stress Control (COSC), from Madison, Wis., pose with a parenting class at the Green Meadow School on Saipan during Innovative Readiness Training Operation Wellness CNMI Behavioral Health Team on July 15, 2023. Ra and Smith, members of the mission’s Behavioral Health Team discussed how to deal with the stress of parenting. (807TH MEDICAL COMMAND DEPLOYMENT SUPPORT)
Marie Leightley, from the Commonwealth Healthcare Corp.’s Community Guidance Center, is working as a community liaison to the behavioral health team and is a member of the parenting class.
She invited Maj. Bradley Smith, a psychiatric nurse practitioner with the 467th Med. Det. Combat Operational Stress Control, from Madison, Wis., and Maj. Caleb Ra, a clinical social worker with the 1835th Med. Det., from Aurora, Co., to discuss the perceptions of being a parent and how to deal with the stress of parenting.
Behavioral health services to the community during the IRT mission include outreach, prevention, education, and “helping individuals during stressful times. Being a parent can be stressful, so we want to help parents develop healthy coping skills and healthy relationships with their children,” said Smith. “We are modeling what the COSC would do in a deployed setting. …We have a clinic environment… where we help soldiers with coping skills, stress management. …You can apply those same principles to the civilian population. And likewise, we have outreach and prevention efforts that we would do in a deployed setting. We would go out to where people are,…meeting them and understanding what their needs are, so you can translate that directly to the civilian population.”
Last Monday, three members of the COSC team presented to children ages 5-12 at a summer camp hosted by the CNMI Division of Youth Services, focusing on healthy emotions, the natural emotions of being a child, and techniques for relationship building with parents and friends.
Yesterday, the team visited the Transitional Living Center and met individuals with severe mental illness and provided mental health education on topics such as healthy sleep habits and stress management.
Behavioral health teams are also conducting outreach events with the communities on Tinian and Rota.
