Maj. Caleb Ra, a clinical social worker with the 1835th Med. Det., from Aurora, Co., and Maj. Bradley Smith, a psychiatric nurse practitioner with the 467th Med. Det. Combat Operational Stress Control, from Madison, Wis., met with a parenting class at Green Meadow School in Saipan during Innovative Readiness Training-Operation Wellness CNMI on July 15, 2023. Ra and Smith, members of the mission’s behavioral health team, discussed how to deal with the stress of parenting.
MEMBERS of the Innovative Readiness Training Operation Wellness CNMI Behavioral Health Team met with a parenting class at Green Meadow School in Saipan on July 15, 2023.
Marie Leightley, from the Commonwealth Healthcare Corporation-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 or COSC, 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,” continued Smith.
On Monday, July 16, 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.
On Tuesday, the team visited the Transitional Living Center to meet individuals with severe mental illness and provide mental health education in topics such as healthy sleep habits and stress management.
Behavioral health teams also conducted outreach events with the communities on Tinian and Rota.
The author is the public affairs officer of the 807th Medical Command Deployment Support.
