Blog posts with the tag "Staff Perspective"

How much advice should a provider provide, if the provider could provide advice? As behavioral health providers we often, with good intentions, get swept up in a mission of change with (for?) our clients. A client states problems they are experiencing and we clearly see what needs to be “fixed” and jump in with our EBP guns blazing. But perhaps, at times, we are a little too quick on the draw.

A few months ago, I was treating a patient with PTSD, but after greater exploration of his distress, which included guilt, shame, and feeling betrayed by his military boss, we fleshed out that moral injury was a salient part of his clinical picture. Currently, there is no consensus in the field on the exact definition of moral injury, but one I like refers to it as “enduring psychosocial and spiritual harms following exposures to high-stakes events that involve transgressions of one’s deeply held moral convictions or beliefs of right and wrong through one’s own or others’ action or inaction, or perceived betrayal by those in positions of authority or trust” (Phelps et al., 2022).