Military Deployment, Cross-Cultural Competence, Resilience And Mental Health Outcomes Of Ghanaian Military Expatriates

Abstract

International peacekeeping activities involves exposure to multiple sources of stressful and traumatic conditions which increase the risk of military expatriates experiencing various forms and degrees of mental health problems. As a result, there is a heightened scholarly interest in understanding how military deployment practices contribute towards averting and minimising mental health cases such as PTSD and depression. However, as the efficacy or protective effects of military deployment practices appears to have been called into question due to the increasing prevalence of mental health problems among troops, it is possible that the role of military deployment practices in reducing mental health problems may be affected by vital personal resources like cross-cultural competence and resilience of the individual service personnel. As these relationships have been less examined, this study sought to examine the role of military deployment practices, resilience, and cross-cultural competence on mental health outcomes of the Ghanaian military expatriates. To achieve this, the study adopted the pragmatism paradigm, and employed sequential mixed research method to collect survey data from 405 military expatriates and interview data from 18 military expatriates of the Ghana Armed Force across various ranks. Individuals were selected by stratification (by ranks) and simple random selections from Formations, Commands and Units for the quantitative study, and the stratified and purposive sampling methods to select the respondents for the qualitative data collection. The quantitative data were analysed using SPSS version 22.0 and AMOS version 21.0 statistical software to obtain descriptive statistics, such as mean scores and standard deviation, Pearson correlation, and structural equation modeling while the qualitative data was analysed using thematic data analysis. The study found that: first, since there are several triggers of stressful and traumatizing conditions in international peacekeeping theatres, it is inferred that peacekeeping operations are extremely dangerous to the mental or psychological wellbeing of deployed troops. However, effective military deployment practices have the capacity to minimize or even prevent incidences of depression and PTSD among troops deployed in international peacekeeping operations. Second, it is possible for individual soldiers with adequate cross-cultural competence to excel psychologically in different mission areas and diverse cultural settings especially in the context of international peacekeeping operations. Third, the significant negative effect of pre-deployment selection and training on mental health outcomes of depression and PTSD is stronger among troops with high levels of cross-cultural competence relative to those with low cross-cultural competence. Fourth, personal resilience improves the mental health of people who encounter traumatic and stressful events by reducing the incidence or occurrence of depression and PTSD among soldiers deployed in international peacekeeping operations. Finally, while the significant negative effect of pre-deployment selection and training on mental health problems of depression and depression is stronger among soldiers with high level of personal resilience, the negative effect of social support during deployment of depression and PTSD does not change at differing levels of individual resilience. The implications of these findings are: first, it is imperative to prioritise psychological problems among troops in future peacekeeping innovative policy formulation and implementation. This may include policies on recruitment and attachment of professional psychologists to complement the spiritual work of the clergymen (Pastors and Imams) during actual deployment. Second, policy interventions for future deployment should recognise and promote the potential facilitating role of resilience and cross-cultural competence in enhancing the negative effect of pre-deployment practices on depression and PTSD among military troops. Furthermore, policies on recruitment/enlistment, training, welfare, administration should be formulated to promote mental wellbeing of military officers generally and particularly those deployed on international peacekeeping theatres. Again, policies that encourage harassment, racism and discrimination during deployment should be promoted in all UN missions to prevent interactional-induced mental health challenges. This research contributes to the literature on military deployment practices and mental health research by demonstrating from the perspectives of the conservation of resources theory that pre-deployment practices, during deployment practices are means of gaining resources while preventing loss of resources in the face of traumatizing and stressful events, thereby cushioning them against mental health outcomes of depression and PTSD. In addition, the study contributes to the resilience theory by showing that resilience can directly and interactively (with pre-deployment practices) buffer against PTSD and depression in military personnel who are exposed to stressful and traumatizing conditions during deployment. Again, given that the extant cross-cultural competence literature is overly focused on mainstream expatriates in international business and international education context to the neglect of military expatriates, this study provides new empirical evidence to fill the gap in the literature on cross-cultural competence and mental health problems among military expatriates.