Addressing Moral Injury Among Military Veterans

by Amy Blumenshine, DM, Coming Home Collaborative

Recent headlines of shocking crimes committed by veterans and a recent psychological study highlight the need for pastoral care providers to update their skills in helping veterans recover from moral injury.

Studies, such as the Stanford University Prison Guard Simulations, have documented that acting out on sadistic or vengeful impulses is an occupational hazard of ordering people to use force on others. The Clinical Psychology Review journal article “Moral injury and moral repair in war veterans: A preliminary model and intervention strategy,” reviews studies of veterans who have incurred moral injury as part of their military experience. According to the article, moral injury can happen when a person acts in ways “that transgress deeply held beliefs, witness that in others, or witness intense human suffering and cruelty.” In common parlance, we talk of deforming or corrupting one’s moral compass.

There are many studies of military service related moral injuries. The Review article reviews these prior studies and calls for more study to understand effective interventions for psychological care providers. The hope is that once a moral injury is identified in a returning service member, this person can address his/her condition before years of self-inflicted and other-inflicted injuries occur.

As the Review article shows, people can recover from moral injury. There is treatment. Church leaders may be interested to know that both the psychological profession and the military tend to relegate moral issues to the faith communities. The Coming Home Collaborative seeks to provide a forum for pastoral care providers to learn from each other to become better prepared for this effort. Indeed the church’s core mandate is to facilitate forgiveness and reconciliation.

The Review article recommends that would-be interveners should first de-sensitize themselves by learning some of the horrific accounts available of what our troops encounter. Unfortunately, too often helpers give subtle nonverbal signs that they prefer not to hear shocking stories, and the veteran obligingly keeps silent.

These are the sorts of stories that I have heard from veterans and their families. Out of fear of ambush, many military convoys act as “king of road.” They are instructed to run over anyone who is in their way. In an effort to cope with this horrific experience, some troops joke about the “road kill.” Some remain haunted by the experience of the bumps of running over the bodies. 

A local service member risks his life to protect traffic on roads in Afghanistan. He knows that many of the trucks are transporting opium which is destined to bring destruction, possibly even to his hometown.

Another local service member has the relatively low mortal danger task of guarding Iraqis while they execute other Iraqis. The hangings are “poorly done,” resulting in his regularly watching people being tortured to death. That is his job.

As one aunt said in commenting on the corruption of character of her veteran returned from war: “My nephew was made to do things no one should have to do and to see things no one should have to see.”

Another excellent resource to prepare pastoral care providers in understanding what happens to some troops is the award-winning radio documentary “What Killed Sgt. Gray?” available in podcast and text at http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/vets/.

Access the Review journal article through your favorite library or here. We also recommend our book Welcome Them Home –Help Them Heal: Pastoral care and ministry with service members returning from war, which can be accessed here.

We of the Coming Home Collaborative also know of many stories of recovery from moral injury. Many veterans can recall crimes they thought about committing in the time surrounding their military service. Today they are so thankful they did not act on those thoughts even though the crimes seemed appropriate to them at the time. It can be very difficult for people to keep their moral compass under military pressures.

Who else is better equipped than our beloved faith community to help people returned from war have the corrective experiences necessary (as recommended in the Review) to heal their moral injuries?

Bibliography information: “Moral injury and moral repair in war veterans: A preliminary model and intervention strategy” by Brett T. Litz, Nathan Stein, Eileen Delaney, Leslie Lebowitz, William P. Nash, Caroline Silva, and Shira Maguen was recently published in Clinical Psychology Review 29 (2009) 695–706.