What is Good Mental Health and Wellness in Military Family Life

Description

When one person joins the military, the whole family serves. Behind every uniform is a spouse, child, or parent navigating the chronic uncertainty, isolation, and invisible wounds that military life leaves behind. Yet, many behavioral health professionals feel unprepared to truly support military families through the psychological toll of service.

Good mental health and wellness in military life requires more than clinical expertise—it requires cultural fluency and compassionate understanding of the unique pressures that shape military families. This course invites you to grow your skillset in a way that deeply honors and supports those who serve and those who love them.

Dr. Mark A. Stebnicki brings over three decades of experience working with veterans, active-duty service members, and their families. As the developer of the Clinical Military Counseling Certificate (CMCC), he is a recognized leader in military mental health education. His grounded expertise and compassionate lens offer clinicians the rare opportunity to learn from someone who understands both the culture of military service and the complex human toll it takes.

In this course, Dr. Stebnicki takes a trauma-informed, culturally responsive approach grounded in research and lived experience. He combines narrative teaching, clinical insights, and psychoeducational resources to equip clinicians with practical tools they can apply immediately.

Topics covered include the military ethos and deployment cycle, combat operational stress, family psychosocial stressors, trauma responses shaped by military indoctrination, mental health stigma within military culture, and the modern realities facing service members and their loved ones. The course also addresses how to effectively foster healthy communication and resilience during transitions such as mobilization, deployment, reintegration, and redeployment.

Key Takeaways:

• Understand military-specific stressors: Learn how combat exposure, mission tempo, and repeated deployments affect both service members and their families.

• Support healthy relationships: Gain tools to promote connection and emotional resilience throughout the deployment cycle.

• Culturally informed care: Build rapport with military clients by understanding their unique language, values, and barriers to accessing care.

Why this course?

• Trusted expert guidance: Learn directly from the founder of a nationally recognized military counseling certificate program.

• A whole-family perspective: Go beyond the battlefield to explore the layered emotional, relational, and cultural dynamics shaping military family wellness.

• Actionable strategies: Walk away with frameworks and techniques you can use immediately in clinical practice.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify and acquire knowledge regarding the unique mental health and psychosocial stressors experienced by service members and military families during the deployment cycle.

• Describe methods to communicate and build healthy relationships throughout the deployment cycle and the demands of a mission-forward and operation tempo environment.

Join us for a course that helps you better understand the real challenges facing military families—and how to respond with empathy, skill, and cultural precision. This learning opportunity can help make your clinical work not only more effective, but more deeply connected to those who sacrifice so much.

Add this course to your cart to begin learning instantly.

Format and Access:

This is a non-interactive, self-study course. Instruction consists of 1 hour of video instruction and a post-test.

Course Details

Availability: 

From the time of registration, you have six months to access the coursework.

Who Should Attend: 

This course is intended for clinicians who provide behavioral health services.

Teaching Methods: 

This is a non-interactive, self-study course. Teaching methods for this course include recorded lectures, videos, a post-test, and a course evaluation.

How to Attend: 

Course access and completion instructions.

Instructor and Disclosures

Instructor

About Mark A. Stebnicki, Ph.D., LCMHC, DCMHS, CRC, CMCC

Mark A. Stebnicki, Ph.D., LCMHC, DCMHS, CRC, CMCC, is professor emeritus and former coordinator of the Military and Trauma Counseling (MTC) Certificate Program (which he developed in 2015) in the Department of Addictions and Rehabilitation at East Carolina University. He also developed the national Clinical Military Counseling Certificate (CMCC) in 2016, a 12-hour CE program offered nationally through the Telehealth Certificate Institute. Dr. Stebnicki has been a counselor, educator, researcher, and practitioner with over 35 years of experience in the fields of rehabilitation and mental health counseling.

He has practiced and published in areas related to stress, traumatic stress, disaster mental health response, and the psychosocial aspects of chronic illness and disability. He has extensive experience working with active-duty military service members, veterans, veterans with disabilities, and military families. Dr. Stebnicki has published 11 professional books, over 40 journal articles, and book chapters and has provided over 120 national and regional presentations. He has served on many statewide and national professional counseling boards.

Disclosure Statement: 

The instructor(s) for this course receive compensation for their services. There are no reported conflicts of interest to disclose.

CE Hours

Credit Hours: 

This course consists of 1 continuing education hour of credit.

Counselors:

Telehealth Certification Institute, LLC has been approved by NBCC as an Approved Continuing Education Provider, ACEP No, 6693.  Programs that do not qualify for NBCC credit are clearly identified.  Telehealth Certification Institute, LLC is solely responsible for all aspects of the programs. 

Telehealth Certification Institute, LLC is recognized by the New York State Education Department's State Board for Mental Health Practitioners as an approved provider of continuing education for Licensed Mental Health Counselors. #MHC-0048.

Marriage and Family Therapists: 

Many MFT licensing boards accept our courses or one of the approvals which we have from professional associations.  You can check with your board to determine if your licensing board would accept this course.

Telehealth Certification Institute, LLC is recognized by the New York State Education Department's State Board for Mental Health Practitioners as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed marriage and family therapists #MFT-0135, effective May 8, 2025.

Social Workers:

Telehealth Certification Institute LLC, #1609, is approved as an ACE provider to offer social work continuing education by the Association of Social Work Boards (ASWB) Approved Continuing Education (ACE) program. Regulatory boards are the final authority on courses accepted for continuing education credit. ACE provider approval period: 05/02/2024 – 05/02/2027. Social workers completing this course receive 1 clinical continuing education credit.

Telehealth Certification Institute, LLC is recognized by the New York State Education Department's State Board for Social Work as an approved provider of continuing education for Licensed Social Workers #SW-0435.

Addiction Professionals:

This course has been approved by Telehealth Certification Institute LLC, as a NAADAC Approved Education Provider, for educational credits. NAADAC Provider #193104, Telehealth Certification Institute LLC is responsible for all aspects of the programming.

Psychologists:

Telehealth Certification Institute LLC is approved by the American Psychological Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists. Telehealth Certification Institute LLC maintains responsibility for this program and its content.

Telehealth Certification Institute, LLC is recognized by the New York State Education Department’s State Board for Psychology as an approved provider of continuing education for Licensed Psychologists #PSY-0128.

Art Therapists: 

Telehealth Certification Institute, LLC is recognized by the New York State Education Department's State Board for Mental Health Practitioners as an approved provider of continuing education for Licensed Creative Arts Therapists #CAT-0093.

Other Professionals: 

This course qualifies for 60 minutes of instructional content as required by many national, state and local licensing boards and professional organizations.  Retain your certificate of completion and contact your board or organization for specific filing requirements.

This is a non-interactive, self-study course.

Accommodations and Policies

Close Captioning is available for live webinars and recorded video presentations.

You can click on the following links to view our policies:

• Accommodations for Individuals with Disabilities.
• Cancellation Policy
• Grievance Policy
• Support Options
• Disclosure Statement