Search Results for: moral injury

The Veterans’ Chaplain and Moral Injury

At The Ada News, a local paper from just outside Oklahoma City, Richard Putnam wrote a short piece on “Christians and Violence” entitled “The Veterans’ Chaplain.”

Putnam, who apparently supports the concept of a military and non-pacifistic defense, also says:

How…do we square the business of defending ourselves and our loved ones with Jesus’ explicit command to not engage in violence? The answer is, of course, that we cannot. We cannot obey Jesus’ command to remain nonviolent and engage in battle to protect our families.

The short column is best summed up here [emphasis added]: Read more

Help for Moral Injury Requires Moral Authority

US Army Alaska chaplain recently participated in a “Holistic Healthcare Conference” that included discussions on PTSD and moral injury.

In a panel discussion, Chaplain (Maj) James Hall made a fascinating statement:

When asked about where service members could seek out help, Hall replied, “it usually takes a moral authority to help someone with a moral injury.”

At first it almost sounds arrogant — but, in fact, it’s true. Consider Read more

Air Force to Help Moral Injury PTSD in UAV Operators

The US Air Force is initiating a program to help “a moral injury form of PTSD” that may be developing in UAV operators:

[UAV operators] watch and listen to an objective for days on end, learning everything about the intended target. Then, when approval is granted for a strike, they watch the results in high-definition, Atkins said.

Fear-based PTSD is something that combat personnel experience, but there is also a moral injury form of PTSD which can affect ISR cryptology personnel, Atkins said. Dealing with, and treating, fear-based PTSD is different than dealing with the type of PTSD that goes against a person’s beliefs and morals.

It is admirable the Air Force has officially Read more

Author: Moral Injury in our Longest Wars

David Wood was interviewed by Alex Horton of the Stars and Stripes on his recently released book, “What Have We Done: The Moral Injury of our Longest Wars.” Wood is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and his take on morality, killing, and war could be interesting [emphasis added]:

I think everyone who goes to war comes back with some form of moral injury.

The simplest definition of moral injury is a violation of your sense of what’s right. We all walk around with a sense of what’s right…

The problem is, in war you can’t possibly live up to those ideals… In my experience, people we send to war struggle with what they see and do, what they have done to them. And that’s moral injury.

Wood essentially says the Read more

Professor Calls for Military Chaplains to Confront Moral Injury

Dr. Martin E. Marty of the University of Chicago Divinity School recently cheered on US military chaplains who are confronting issues of moral injury.

Marty apparently came to see the issues associated with moral injury relatively recently:

A latecomer to the discourse, I became alerted to all this by the work and writings of thoughtful experts. For example, I have carefully read and now recommend Moral Warriors, Moral Wounds: The Ministry of the Christian Ethic by Wollom A. Jensen and friend James M. Childs, Jr. One is a military chaplain and the other a theological ethicist; the two provide close-up and soul-deep analyses and reports.

Dr. Jensen is a retired Navy chaplain (Captain) and Read more

Arizona Civilians Host Military Chaplain Conference on Moral Injury

chaplainconfThough only recently publicized, the Arizona Coalition of Military Families hosted the 2016 Statewide Symposium in Support of Service Members, Veterans and their Families at precisely the same time the Air Force Reserve Command was hosting its somewhat infamous conference.

The published article is somewhat vague, spending more time talking about the chaplaincy in general than the symposium itself. But there were some important quotes [emphasis added]:  Read more

Report Again Highlights Moral Injury

As has been highlighted here before, troops may come home from war with many types of wounds — physical, mental, and even spiritual. Much of the non-physical wound care has focused on PTSD, but for a few years advocates have been trying to raise the importance of the moral injuries that troops may bring home:

Moral injury is when veterans feel extreme guilt and shame from something they did or witnessed in conflict that goes against their values…The term was introduced in the 1990s by a now-retired Department of Veterans Affairs psychiatrist, Dr. Jonathan Shay, who diagnosed Read more

Former Soldier on Moral Injury and PTSD

Thomas Gibbons-Neff of Georgetown University pens a fascinating read on moral injury, a reaction to war distinct from, but often confused with, post traumatic stress.

Moral injury is a nebulous term that few use seriously because it doesn’t read well on Veterans Affairs claims. It’s a new term but not a new concept. Moral injury is as timeless as war — going back to when Ajax thrust himself upon his sword on the shores of Troy. Unlike post-traumatic stress, which is a result of a fear-conditioned response, moral injury is a feeling of existential disorientation that manifests as intense guilt…

As discussed here many times, moral Read more

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