Deployment Psychology Blog

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Factor by which active service members and veterans with a combat-related traumatic brain injury (TBI) are "more likely to attempt suicide than those without a TBI," according to a study recently published in the journal Military Psychology -- The Purple Heart and suicide risk in Post-9/11 U.S. Army Combat Veterans with a traumatic brain injury: A mixed methods study.

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).