Moral injury

The wound that comes from doing, witnessing, failing to prevent, or being betrayed in the doing of something that violates one's deepest sense of what is right. A reading list assembled around the term — Shay's originating clinical use with Vietnam veterans, Litz's reformulation as a distinct category from PTSD, the theological and philosophical responses (Tick, Brock & Lettini, Sherman, Kinghorn), the veteran prose and journalism (Boudreau, Wood, Klay), the measurement instruments (Currier, Koenig), and the recent extension into healthcare during and after COVID.

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articles

Reading the moral-injury literature

A chronological and conceptual reading list for the contemporary moral-injury literature — from Lifton's 1973 articulation through Shay's 1994 clinical naming, Litz's 2009 reformulation, the theological and philosophical responses, the measurement programme, the healthcare extension, and the philosophical critique. Where the disagreements live and how the construct arrived at its present shape.

concepts

Adaptive disclosure · Agent-regret · Atrocity-producing situation · Just war · Moral distress · Moral injury · Moral repair · Perpetration-induced traumatic stress · Post-traumatic stress disorder · Potentially morally injurious event · Soul wound · Thémis · Thumos

people

Andrew Jameton · Bernard Williams · Brett Litz · Camillo "Mac" Bica · Camilo Mejía · David Wood · Edward Tick · Gabriella Lettini · Harold G. Koenig · Jonathan Shay · Joseph M. Currier · Joseph Wiinikka-Lydon · Karl Marlantes · Larry Dewey · Margaret Urban Walker · Nancy Sherman · Phil Klay · Rachel M. MacNair · Rita Nakashima Brock · Robert Emmet Meagher · Robert Jay Lifton · Simon Talbot · Tyler Boudreau · Warren Kinghorn · Wendy Dean

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