Wounded Souls and Moral Injury

Posted on September 1, 2011 by dianesilver

My story about moral injury is finally out in Miller-McCune magazine. This is one of several articles to come out of my work on the Goodness Project.

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7 Responses to Wounded Souls and Moral Injury

  1. Kelley says:
    September 1, 2011 at 9:44 am

    I’m in tears after reading your story…such an important issue, one that has affected my family deeply. Thank you!

    Reply
  3. dianesilver says:
    September 1, 2011 at 6:13 pm

    Thanks, Kel and Nancy. I appreciate it. Hugs to your family, Kelley.

    Reply
  4. Evonne says:
    September 17, 2011 at 10:24 pm

    Has your research into moral injury looked at nonsoldiers with PTSD, like abused women and children, or war victims?

    Reply
  5. dianesilver says:
    September 18, 2011 at 8:49 am

    I originally wanted to include all of the people you mentioned in my Miller-McCune article, but the editors wanted to focus this piece on soldiers. Given the length limit we faced, I think they were right, but I hope to do more in the future on how moral injury can impact anyone. I welcome comments from anyone who has information on the topic.

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  6. Clare Flourish says:
    December 5, 2011 at 10:22 am

    My question would be, how does this affect communities? Communities at war, or white South Africans before 1994, or us, now, in the global financial crisis?
    One that you might be able to answer is, do you think the talk of damage to souls is any more than metaphor?
    Thank you. This is valuable.

    Reply
  7. dianesilver says:
    December 5, 2011 at 4:43 pm

    Welcome Clare! Thanks for stopping by. Certainly the damage to a person’s emotional health is well documented. If you believe in the existence of a soul, then it would stand to reason that a soul could be wounded, but that wound could take many forms and none of them would have to be fatal. Perhaps such a wound would come in the form of disconnecting a person or putting a barrier between a person and the sense of the divine. But theologies vary, and your theology may be far different than mine. On the topic of communities, I suspect that communities can suffer such wounds, and that it could be useful to conceive of our problems in those terms. If, for example, slavery inflicted a wound on the psyche of the U.S., then how best should we try to heal our lingering injuries as a society? I’m fascinated by the topic of moral injury and its possible impact on societies. I intend to explore that more in the future.

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