Moral Injury

Description

Andrea Phelps, David Forbes et al. :

"Moral injury is understood to be the strong cognitive and emotional response that can occur following events that violate a person's moral or ethical code.1 Potentially morally injurious events include a person's own or other people's acts of omission or commission, or betrayal by a trusted person in a high-stakes situation.

Unlike post-traumatic stress disorder, which can occur following threat-based trauma, potentially morally injurious events do not necessarily involve a threat to life. Rather, morally injurious events threaten one's deeply held beliefs and trust. Moral injury is not considered a mental illness. However, an individual's experiences of potentially morally injurious events can cause profound feelings of shame and guilt, and alterations in cognitions and beliefs (eg, “I am a failure”, “colleagues don't care about me”), as well as maladaptive coping responses (eg, substance misuse, social withdrawal, or self-destructive acts)."

(https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-0366(21)00113-9/fulltext)