What is moral injury?
Moral injury is a chronic emotional and psychological wound.1
Moral injury happens when your actions or experiences go against your moral beliefs and cause inner conflict and distress that don’t go away.2
A potential moral injury is a betrayal of what is right by someone in a position of trust in a high-stakes situation. It could be something you did, something that happened to you, or something you witnessed.3
Occupational moral injury is a syndrome, not a mental health diagnosis. It can put you at high risk for mental health challenges like anxiety and depression.4 Identifying moral injury can help guide individual treatment and personal choices.
Moral injuries are more likely to happen in cases of moral dilemmas. Think of difficult decisions in healthcare to ration or withdraw care5 or policies and procedures in law enforcement or social work that hurt the people these workers are meant to protect.6
Examples of potential moral injuries:
Can you think of other examples?
Consider a member of the clergy who betrays their congregation’s trust, a teacher in higher education who exploits their student, or a politician who ignores the needs of their constituents.
What about inequality, homelessness, or global climate change?
Moral injury is a recent concept first described in the military context. However, researchers are working to improve our understanding of moral injury in other workplaces and other contexts.9