102nd IW Resiliency Team Focuses on Interpersonal Relationship

Photo By Senior Airman Junhao Yu | 102nd IW Resiliency Team utilizes new analytic tool to provide improved mental health services to members on base. (Photo Illustration by Mr. Tim Sandland)  

BOURNE, MA, UNITED STATES

08.11.2020

Story by Senior Airman Junhao Yu 

102nd Intelligence Wing   

OTIS AIR NATIONAL GUARD BASE, Mass. – In a recent interview, members of the 102nd Intelligence Wing Resiliency Team talked about ways and strategies Airmen can use to help alleviate stress from the grueling work they must do every day to ensure mission success.

Ms. Erin Faye, manager of the 102nd IW Airman and Family Readiness Program, accompanied by Ms. Jill Garvin, wing Director of Psychological Health at Otis ANGB, elaborated on what the Resiliency Team aims to achieve.

“Our team has three goals”, said Faye. “The first is to track the efficacy of our education programs, both formally and informally on the unit level by building a sense of relationships and connectedness with our Airmen.

Secondly, we want to highlight all the different units at our organization to capitalize on our wing’s talents and capabilities to help improve our Airmen’s mental resilience. Finally, it’s about taking care of each other by utilizing all the tools we have at our hands such as taking time off when needed to rest and recharge.”

Ultimately, in order to build up our Airmen it’s about enhancing their lives both on, and off base, according to Garvin.

The team’s own analysis of their outreach effort has shown that many members at Otis are still unaware of the resources available to them in order to achieve mental resilience.

“We encourage everyone to come visit us as we are always doing something throughout the year,” continues Garvin.

The team announced that the wing will be among the first in the Air National Guard to participate in surveys developed using the Getting To Outcomes® toolkit from the RAND Corporation. The goal is to quantitatively assess areas of strength and weaknesses in an effort to improve mental health outcome here on base.

“One of things we’ve identified by looking at my caseload through the GTO is that many of our Airmen face relationship problems in their private lives,” said Garvin. “Whether it’s people going through a divorce or having trouble maintaining a healthy dialog with their partners, there is a need for focused help in that area by updating our Community Action Plan.”

Through the GTO toolkit, the team is looking for ways to develop a survey to help improve member’s emotional-interpersonal skills by providing research based insight into their personal relationships before small conflicts can escalate into a serious crisis.

The GTO toolkit, however, is not limited to improving romantic relationships, rather an instrument that could solve a multitude of different interpersonal problems members might face in developing resiliency, Garvin explains.

“The wing will be surveyed a few times to ensure accuracy and all the surveys will be anonymous,” said Faye. “We don’t want to take up too much of an Airman’s time so the surveys will be concise and to the point.

However, the GTO model suggests that we keep track of trends from beginning, middle, and the end to analyze the effectiveness of our methods so we can modify as we go.”

People who take the survey will be able to see how the community is doing but no individual results will be shown. Members looking to take the survey should visit the base Facebook page and look out for emails sent out by the wing commander.

Additionally, the team recommends Love Nudge, which is a fun and interactive app available to Airmen on their smartphone it can help intentionally express love in ways that are meaningful. For more tools how to improve interpersonal-relationships the team also recommends visiting The Gottman Institute online for more research based relationship advice.

• Date Taken: 08.11.2020
• Date Posted: 08.11.2020 14:42
• Story ID: 375754
• Location: BOURNE, MA, US