ArticlePsychology and psychotherapy2023
The shaping of moral injury among UK military veterans of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Article in Psychology and psychotherapy, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.
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2 citing papers in PubMed, 4 citations in OpenAlex.
- A scoping review of moral injury in refugees.European journal of psychotraumatology · 2025Article
- The shaping of moral injury among UK military veterans of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.Psychology and psychotherapy · 2023Article
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
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Abstract
objectiveResearch on 'moral injury'-the psychological wound experienced by military personnel and other 'functionaries' whose moral values are violated-has proliferated in recent years. Many psychological researchers, including those in the UK, have subscribed to an increasingly individualised operationalisation of moral injury, with medicalised criteria that closely mirrors PTSD. This trend carries assumptions that have not been comprehensively verified by empirical research. This study aims to explore UK military veterans' experiences of, and challenges to, their moral values in relation to their deployment experiences, without prematurely foreclosing exploration of wider systemic influences.
methodTwelve UK military veterans who served in Afghanistan and/or Iraq were interviewed, and the data were analysed thematically and reflexively.
resultsThree inter-related themes were generated: (1) 'you've been undermined', (2) 'how am I involved in this?' and (3) 'civilianised'.
conclusionsThe analysis suggests that several assumptions privileged in moral injury research may be empirically contradicted, at least in relation to the experiences of UK military veterans. These assumptions include that moral injury is exclusively driven by individual, episodic acts of commission and omission, invariably leads to guilt and necessarily bifurcates into variants of either perpetration or betrayal. Instead, participants understood the moral violations they experienced as socially contingent. Rather than 'treating' moral injury as a disorder of thinking and feeling located within an individual, the socially contextualised understanding of moral injury indicated by this study's findings may prompt the development of psychological and social interventions that understand moral injury as the fallout of what occurs between people and within systems.
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