Dr. Rita Brock recently shared her thoughts on moral distress and injury and COVID-19 frontline workers with me. Dr. Brock has spent much of her career as an academic in philosophy and religion, obtaining her doctorate in this field in 1988. Her interests turned toward moral injury after a 2009 article by Dr. Brett Litz “grabbed me and wouldn’t let me go.”
One of the courses that I teach frequently for the Center for Deployment Psychology (CDP) is “Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Depression: Working with Service Members & Veterans” (CBT-D). At CDP, we update all of our courses regularly to ensure that they’re current and fresh. With the current CBT-D workshop updates, I’m excited to be able to incorporate information from Dr. Judith Beck’s newly released third edition of Cognitive Behavior Therapy: Basics and Beyond.
Providing therapy to military-connected clients with PTSD during the pandemic has raised my awareness about the intersection between trauma symptoms, COVID-19-related anxiety and distress, and military values that can help individuals cope with the outbreak like having good situational awareness, taking individual responsibility, applying discipline, and striving for the larger mission to maintain safety and protect others. My clinical work has also led me to think more about how the pandemic is impacting military members and their families overall.
The ongoing pandemic has created an environment of chronic stress, fear, tension and vigilance. While this is a difficult combination for all of us to experience, it can be especially difficult for those who have experienced this combination before, such as our combat Veterans. Traditions and rituals can help us remember more peaceful times and experience subsequent emotions, temper difficult memories from our past and stress of our present.
Following up on Christy Collette’s piece on "Military Family Resilience during COVID-19," this week’s blog will share additional information about the unique impacts of the pandemic on military families. Using information gathered directly from five different military families during the first wave of COVID-19, this blog will highlight some of the important issues behavioral health providers should consider when working with military families.