Addressing Religious and Spiritual Diversity in Moral Injury Care: Five Perspectives

• Published in: Current treatment options in psychiatry 2023-12, Vol.10 (4), p.446-462
• Main Authors: Pyne, Jeffrey M., Currier, Joseph, Hinkson, Kent D., Usset, Timothy J., Abeita, Lynn A., Dordal, Paul, Kouser, Taimur, Awaad, Rania, Weber, Marcela C., Griffin, Brandon J.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Agnosticism; Armed forces; Case studies; Christianity; Cisgender; Collaboration; Medicine; Medicine & Public Health; Meditation; Mental disorders; Mental health; Military withdrawals; Moral injury; Neurology; Organizational change; Post traumatic stress disorder; Psychiatry; Psychologists; Psychotherapy; Religion; Review; Spirituality; Topical Collection on Moral Injury; Trauma; Veterans
• ISSN: 2196-3061; 2196-3061
• DOI: 10.1007/s40501-023-00308-3

  Purpose of Review Moral injury is increasingly recognized as a problem across various populations. Moral injury symptoms can occur when an individual’s action, lack of action, or witness of an event violates their moral beliefs, and include dysphoric emotions such as guilt, shame, and disgust; loss of meaning and purpose; withdrawal from valued relationships and groups; and religious/spiritual struggle (e.g., feeling abandoned or punished by the divine, loss of faith in a previously held belief system). Spiritually oriented moral injury interventions are sometimes delivered by mental health clinicians, chaplains, other religious/spiritual leaders, and peers. However, there is a lack of research on moral injury interventions among diverse religious/spiritual populations. Recent Findings To start bridging this gap, we present anonymized moral injury case studies from the perspectives of five spiritual traditions (listed alphabetically): Agnosticism, Islam, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS, also known as Mormonism), Native American spiritual ways, and Roman Catholicism. These case studies describe the morally injurious event(s), ensuing mental health problems and religious/spiritual struggles, how these struggles are understood within the specific religious/spiritual tradition, and interventions and resources used to address moral injury. Summary We discuss resources for religious/spiritual competency training, religiously/spiritually oriented psychotherapies for moral injury, and approaches to care involving collaboration between mental health and religious/spiritual community resources.