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Recontextualising moral injury among military veterans: An integrative theoretical review
Author(s) -
Hollis Jake,
Hanna Paul,
Perman Gemma
Publication year - 2022
Publication title -
journal of community and applied social psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.042
H-Index - 63
eISSN - 1099-1298
pISSN - 1052-9284
DOI - 10.1002/casp.2643
Subject(s) - moral injury , moral psychology , psychology , moral reasoning , sociology , poison control , social psychology , social cognitive theory of morality , betrayal , discipline , moral authority , mainstream , moral disengagement , criminology , epistemology , social science , law , medicine , political science , philosophy , environmental health
Moral injury was originally conceived as a socially‐inflicted wound of betrayal experienced by military veterans (Shay, 1994). However, moral injury has since been redefined by psychological researchers as an individualised, predominantly perpetration‐driven, and psychopathological phenomenon (e.g., Currier et al., 2015; Jinkerson, 2016). However, social scientific researchers (e.g., Hodgson & Carey, 2017; Molendijk, 2019; Wiinikka‐Lydon, 2017) have contested mainstream psychology's medicalisation and decontextualisation of moral injury. This theoretical review integrates insights from across these discourses, and brings them into dialogue with ideas from moral psychology, evolutionary science, and community psychology. The aim of this cross‐disciplinary review is to promote a more holistic understanding of moral injury that does justice to its individual and social dimensions. Drawing on these different theoretical strands, this paper proposes that moral injury can be best understood as a psychological wound to basic human needs for social belonging and cohesion. The implications of this integrative understanding of moral injury for applied psychologists and other societal actors are explored. While the relevance of moral injury to civilian populations such as health and social care professionals is clear (e.g., Dombo et al., 2013; French et al., 2021), this paper focuses on military veterans, whose experiences originally prompted the coinage of the term. Please refer to the Supplementary Material section to find this article's Community and Social Impact Statement.