Military Bereavement Study on Grief Covers All Causes

Military families in largest ever bereavement study share insights on grief
Stars and Stripes
By DAVID CRARY
The Associated Press
Published: January 4, 2015

"Regardless of how the person died, at some point in their life they stepped forward to raise their right hand and say `I will protect this nation"

This Dec. 16, 2014 photo shows the wedding photo of Army widow, Aimee Wriglesworth, and her late husband, Chad, on display in her home in Bristow, Va. The couple married when Chad was in the Air Force; he later transferred to the Army, where he rose to the rank of Major. Wriglesworth lost her husband to cancer in 2013. By the hundreds, other widows, widowers, parents, siblings and children are sharing accounts of their grief as part of the largest study ever of America's military families as they go through bereavement.
STEVE HELBER/AP

With his wife and child close at hand, Army Maj. Chad Wriglesworth battled skin cancer for more than a year before dying at age 37.

"It was long and painful and awful," said Aimee Wriglesworth, who believes the cancer resulted from exposure to toxic fumes in Iraq. Yet the 28-year-old widow from Bristow, Virginia, seized a chance to recount the ordeal and its aftermath to a researcher, hoping that input from her and her 6-year-old daughter might be useful to other grieving military families.

"To be able to study what we felt and what we're going through - maybe this will help people down the line," Wriglesworth said.

By the hundreds, other widows, widowers, parents, siblings and children are sharing accounts of their grief as part of the largest study ever of America's military families as they go through bereavement. About 2,000 people have participated over the past three years, and one-on-one interviews will continue through February.

The federally funded project is being conducted by the Center for the Study of Traumatic Stress at the Maryland-based Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences. The study is open to families of the more than 19,000 service members from all branches of the military who have died on active duty since the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, regardless of whether the death resulted from combat, accident, illness, suicide or other causes.

Of all the active-duty deaths in the period being studied, about 13 percent were suicides. Accidents accounted for 35 percent, combat 30 percent, illness 15 percent and homicide 3 percent, according to Cozza.

One of the major partners for the study is the Arlington, Virginia-based support group known as TAPS - the Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors. It was founded in 1994 by Bonnie Carroll two years after her husband, a brigadier general, died in an Army plane crash.

Carroll said she was heartened that the study encompassed all types of deaths, even including service members responsible for murder-suicides.

"Regardless of how the person died, at some point in their life they stepped forward to raise their right hand and say `I will protect this nation,'" Carroll said.
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