Moral Injury Treatments
Moral injury is not a diagnosable mental health disorder and may occur from a ‘mixed’ event that causes both a challenging moral dilemma and a life threat event (Williamson et al., 2021). Many veterans who experience traumatic warzone events seek treatment via Veterans Health Administration settings (i.e., Veterans Affairs Medical Centers, Vet Centers) and receive evidence-based treatments for PTSD, such as cognitive processing therapy (CPT) and prolonged exposure (PE). These treatments often focus on the hyperarousal and intrusion symptoms of a fear-based disorder (Held et al., 2018). However, investigators have called for mind-body programs as events that cause moral distress may require different treatment approaches (Cenkner et al., 2021; Kopacz et al., 2016; Steenkamp et al., 2015; Walser & Wharton, 2021). In addition, existing PTSD treatments might not be designed to attend to moral injury developing from certain combat or non-combat experiences including remote combat theatre (Kelley, Bravo et al., 2021), military sexual assault (Hamrick et al., 2022; Maguen et al., 2022), or acts for which no one is to blame (Fleming, 2021). Thus, moral injury might extend beyond bioneurological effects (Starnino et al., 2020) into the moral realm (Litz et al., 2009) in ways that treatments for PTSD may not address the diverse trauma needs of veterans.