by Jane E. Brody
The New York Times
Originally published June 6, 2016
Here are two excerpts:
Therapists both within and outside the Department of Veterans Affairs increasingly recognize moral injury as the reason so many returning vets are self-destructive and are not helped, or only partly helped, by established treatments for PTSD.
Moral injury has some of the symptoms of PTSD, especially anger, depression, anxiety, nightmares, insomnia and self-medication with drugs or alcohol. And it may benefit from some of the same treatments. But moral injury has an added burden of guilt, grief, shame, regret, sorrow and alienation that requires a very different approach to reach the core of a sufferer’s psyche.
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Therapists who study and treat moral injury have found that no amount of medication can relieve the pain of trying to live with an unbearable moral burden. They say those suffering from moral injury contribute significantly to the horrific toll of suicide among returning vets — estimated as high as 18 to 22 a day in the United States, more than the number lost in combat.
The article is here.
