The June 2019 issue of the Journal of Traumatic Stress (JTS) was devoted to Moral Injury (MI). As a clinical psychologist working at a military training hospital where nearly all patients are Warfighters, I was curious about current recommendations regarding the accepted definition of MI, what measure to use, and how to treat it.
When addressing moral injury, there is a need to help patients learn to compartmentalize their experiences. But it doesn’t stop there. Patients then need to be able to step back and see all the pieces of themselves in order to move forward.
In today’s Staff Perspective, the Center for Deployment Psychology joins forces with the Consortium for Health and Military Performance (CHAMP) to discuss the importance of human performance optimization (HPO) and Total Force Fitness. Click below to read more about how CHAMP seeks to improve the performance and resilience of Service members and their families through translational research and the development of evidence-based educational resources on HPO.
Yoga, meditation, weighted blankets, herbal remedies....while interest in complementary and alternative interventions has grown, the science behind them is still cloudy. Rather than try to formulate a one-size-fits-all recommendation, I find it more helpful to consider the ways that the complementary intervention augments or contradicts the evidence-based psychotherapy for that condition. There are four questions that help me critically evaluate the suitability of these interventions for patients.
Despite an extensive history of punitive practices towards what we know today as the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) community, LGBTQ people have served in the United States military since its inception (GSAFE, 2018). Those LGBTQ Veterans who served during World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War did so at a time when the military defined homosexuality as a mental disorder, with support from the organized medical community (e.g., APA).