“Once a Soldier, always a Soldier” until you’re not: The effect of identity loss on mental health and well-being following military discharge

An report from the Australian Royal Commission on Veteran Suicide has suggested that transition-related losses (loss of purpose, identity, and culture) adversely affect veteran mental illness and suicide risk. Subjective Loss of Self Theory posits that significant life transitions can cause a range of changes to group memberships, relationships, and roles and consequently can disrupt our sense of identity. To the extent that these disruptions lead to a subjective feeling of a loss as to who one was (past self) or will become (future self) can create a vulnerability to mental health and well-being challenges. Across two studies involving American (n = 179) and Australian veterans (n − 379), both subjective loss of past and future self were associated with worse mental health and well-being, with loss of future self being the stronger predictor. Additionally, a negative discharge experience directly predicted worse mental health and well-being and increased subjective loss of past and future self. However, Study 2 demonstrated that the effects of negative discharge experiences were fully or partially mediated by the perception that these experiences amounted to military institutional betrayal. Collectively, these results indicate that military discharge can result in identity disruption via a perceived lost sense of self, increasing vulnerability to mental health and well-being challenges. Additionally, negative discharge experiences (especially when perceived as institutional betrayal) can exacerbate these sense of self losses and mental health and wellbeing vulnerability, both directly through the experience of betrayal, and indirectly through the resultant increased losses of past and future self.