Summary :
Positive social connections, when established, can provide important social resources that alter the way individuals experience and respond to stressful events or circumstances. Military families face several unique challenges that can strain the strength and accessibility of these social resources. This report examines several issues related to social fitness. Social fitness is defined as the combined resources a person gets from his or her social world. This concept encompasses the availability and maintenance of social relationships, and the ability to utilize those ties to manage stressors and successfully perform tasks. Social fitness resources are the aspects of those relationships that strengthen a person’s ability to withstand and rebound from challenges (e.g., stress, threat, or disaster) or even grow from them. The key resilience factor associated with social fitness is social support. Central sources of social support for U.S. Airmen include family, friends, co-workers (including military units), physical communities and neighborhoods, cyber communities, and imagined communities (groups with which a person identifies and to which he or she feels a sense of belonging even if he or she has never met others in the group). The structure of one’s social networks can also be a source of social support. Social support comes in three primary forms: emotional (e.g., having someone to talk to about problems), instrumental (e.g., a loan, a ride to a doctor’s appointment), and informational (e.g., knowledge about which companies are hiring). In this report, we identify several specific scales and indexes used to measure such support. Social support can also be either actual or perceived. In fact, there is some evidence that perceived support is more influential on mental health than actual support.

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