The moral challenges of moral injury

Since 2006, the high rates of suicide among soldiers and veterans in the United States have signified a crisis of military mental health. Psychologists and psychiatrists affiliated with the military, such as Brett Litz and William Nash, have noted an urgent need to rethink the stress of war. While “Post-traumatic Stress Disorder” has become the primary category for treating the traumatic effects of war since it was introduced in 1980, the diagnosis has lost much of its original moral content. To rearticulate the moral dimension of soldiers’ suffering, Litz, Nash, and their colleagues use the term “moral injury.” Moral injury refers to not only the moral anguish in having been betrayed by one’s leaders but also the sense of having betrayed oneself, one’s friends, or one’s ideals. In this chapter, Lang and Schott draw on their backgrounds in social psychology and philosophy to explore the moral dimensions of moral injury, contrasting it with “moral disengagement,” arguably the more common reaction to a conflict between one’s beliefs and actions. The authors discuss the dissonance involved in conscience and moral failure, and they reflect on how attending to moral suffering contributes to understanding moral repair.