Moral Injury Among Returning Veterans

Josh Morris privileges the voices of veterans to argue that returning soldiers need families, friends, and religious communities to listen to their stories with compassion to avoid amplifying the effects of moral injury. When society greets returning soldiers in ways that reinforce cultural norms that frame military service as heroic, rather than acknowledging its ambiguities and harmful effects, it exacerbates moral injury and keeps veterans from resolving inner conflicts and coping effectively with civilian life. Morris, a military chaplain and veteran who served in Afghanistan, knows these difficulties first hand. Using stories from other veterans, Morris helps us see how cultural assumptions about military service can complicate moral injury and a veteran's return home. Drawing from liberation theologies, ideology critique, and Antonio Gramsci's advocacy for the working class, the book suggests useful perspectives and spiritual care resources for military chaplains, religious leaders, caregivers, and concerned civilians. Morris argues that military chaplains are uniquely positioned to help returning soldiers resist the amplification of existing moral injury. Moving from “thank you for your service” to liberative solidarity can galvanize resistance and make change possible.

The first book to explore the idea and effect of moral injury on veterans, their families, and their communities Although veterans make up only 7 percent of the U.S. population, they account for an alarming 20 percent of all suicides. And though treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder has undoubtedly alleviated suffering and allowed many service members returning from combat to transition to civilian life, the suicide rate for veterans under thirty has been increasing. Research by Veterans Administration health professionals and veterans’ own experiences now suggest an ancient but unaddressed wound of war may be a factor: moral injury. This deep-seated sense of transgression includes feelings of shame, grief, meaninglessness, and remorse from having violated core moral beliefs. Rita Nakashima Brock and Gabriella Lettini, who both grew up in families deeply affected by war, have been working closely with vets on what moral injury looks like, how vets cope with it, and what can be done to heal the damage inflicted on soldiers’ consciences. In Soul Repair, the authors tell the stories of four veterans of wars from Vietnam to our current conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan—Camillo “Mac” Bica, Herman Keizer Jr., Pamela Lightsey, and Camilo Mejía—who reveal their experiences of moral injury from war and how they have learned to live with it. Brock and Lettini also explore its effect on families and communities, and the community processes that have gradually helped soldiers with their moral injuries. Soul Repair will help veterans, their families, members of their communities, and clergy understand the impact of war on the consciences of healthy people, support the recovery of moral conscience in society, and restore veterans to civilian life. When a society sends people off to war, it must accept responsibility for returning them home to peace.

All royalties from the sale of this book are being donated to Warfighter Advance, http://www.warfighteradvance.org Moral Injury has been called the "signature wound" of today's wars. It is also as old as the human record of war, as evidenced in the ancient war epics of Greece, India, and the Middle East. But what exactly is Moral Injury? What are its causes and consequences? What can we do to prevent or limit its occurrence among those we send to war? And, above all, what can we do to help heal afflicted warriors? This landmark volume provides an invaluable resource for those looking for answers to these questions. Gathered here are some of the most far-ranging, authoritative, and accessible writings to date on the topic of Moral Injury. Contributors come from the fields of psychology, theology, philosophy, psychiatry, law, journalism, neuropsychiatry, classics, poetry, and, of course, the profession of arms. Their voices find common cause in informing the growing, international conversation on war and war's deepest and most enduring invisible wound. Few may want to have this myth-challenging, truth-telling conversation, but it is one we must have if we truly wish to help those we send to fight our wars.

Drawing on in-depth interviews with service women and men, Nancy Sherman weaves narrative with a philosophical and psychological analysis of the moral and emotional attitudes at the heart of the afterwars. Afterwar offers no easy answers for reintegration. It insists that we widen the scope of veteran outreach to engaged, one-on-one relationships with veterans.

A complete guide to an innovative, research-based brief treatment specifically developed for service members and veterans, this book combines clinical wisdom and in-depth knowledge of military culture. Adaptive disclosure is designed to help those struggling in the aftermath of traumatic war-zone experiences, including life threat, traumatic loss, and moral injury, the violation of closely held beliefs or codes. Detailed guidelines are provided for assessing clients and delivering individualized interventions that integrate emotion-focused experiential strategies with elements of cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT). Reproducible handouts can be downloaded and printed in a convenient 8 1/2" x 11" size.

Offers a powerful perspective that affirms the deep damage war does to the psyche and addresses how to truly heal war trauma in veterans, their families, and communities, drawing on history, mythology, and soldiers' stories--from World War I to Iraq. Original.

In Sin Sick, Joshua Pederson draws on the latest research about identifying and treating the pain of perpetration to advance and deploy a literary theory of moral injury that addresses fictional representations of the mental anguish of those who have injured or killed others. Pederson's work foregrounds moral injury, a recent psychological concept distinct from trauma that is used to describe the psychic wounds suffered by those who breach their own deeply held ethical principles. Complementing writings on trauma theory that posit the textual manifestation of trauma as absence, Sin Sick argues that moral injury appears in literature in a variety of forms of excess. Pederson closely reads works by Dostoevsky (Crime and Punishment), Camus (The Fall), and veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (Brian Turner's Here, Bullet; Kevin Powers' The Yellow Birds; Phil Klay's Redeployment; and Roy Scranton's War Porn), contending that recognizing and understanding the suffering of perpetrators, without condoning their crimes, enriches the experience of reading—and of being human.

Moral injury has developed in earnest since 2009 within psychology and military studies, especially through work with veterans of the U.S. military’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. A major part of this work is the attempt to identify means of healing, recovery, and repair for those morally injured by their experiences in combat (or similar situations). What this volume does is to provide insight into the identification of moral injury, the development of the notion, attempts to work with those affected, emerging ideas about moral injury, portraits of moral injury in the past and present, and, especially, what creative engagement with moral injury might look like from a variety of perspectives. As such, it will be an important resource for Christian ministers, chaplains, health care workers, and other providers and caregivers who serve afflicted communities.

This eBook focuses on a relatively new frontier in psychiatry, the topic of “moral injury” (MI), which is examined here in the setting of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among Veterans and Active Duty Military. We define MI, describe how to identify it by screening, explain the impact that MI has on mental health outcomes (particularly PTSD and mental health problems often associated with PTSD), and provide information on what clinicians can do about it. While the focus here is on Veterans and Active Duty Military, MI is much more widespread than just among former or current military personnel. Healthcare professionals, first responders, clergy, and many patients seeking mental health care are also likely suffering from MI, which is not recognized or treated because clinicians are not familiar with it. Burnout among health professionals and those engaged in other high-stress occupations may often have MI as an underlying condition that is driving the burnout or related emotional condition. Therefore, psychiatrists and all mental health professionals must know about this syndrome, utilize the tools now available to identify it, and learn about interventions that can be employed to treat it. Success in treating many of the common mental health conditions that appear resistant to treatment may depend on knowing about this new (yet very old) syndrome.

In this thoughtful book culled from a wide range of experiences, Alice and Staughton Lynd introduce readers to what modern clinicians, philosophers, and theologians have attempted to describe as "moral injury." From combat veterans of America's foreign wars to Israeli refuseniks, and from "hardened" criminals in supermax confinement in Ohio to hunger strikers in California's Pelican Bay prison, the Lynds give us the voices of those breaking the cycle of moral injury with courageous acts of nonviolent resistance.