A moral injury has been defined as an event where someone has seen, witnessed or done something that breaches their moral or ethical code. Whilst a moral injury is not a mental illness, people who have them often experience strong feelings of shame, guilt or anger and we know that for many, moral injuries can occur alongside symptoms of PTSD and depression.
Concerns that the Covid-19 crisis has placed unprecedented pressures on frontline key workers has made this an urgent area of new research.
This UKPTS event also features in a new ESTSS programme of weekly seminars which bring fresh insight from trauma experts into critical issues facing society across Europe during this pandemic.
Aims: To disseminate the current understanding around conceptualisations of moral injury.
Topics: In this webinar, participants will gain a better understanding of
- Current research on moral injury in the UK
- Types of events leading to moral injury
- How moral injury is thought to develop
- Potential risks and protective factors for experiencing moral injury
Learning outcomes: Participants will acquire knowledge about the history of moral injury, the relationship between moral injury and other mental health disorders and ideas about the key constructs to measure moral injury
Target audience: public health specialists, psychologists, psychotherapists, social workers, managers, policy makers, journalists.
- This article in the Conversation introduces the concept.
- An editorial in Occupational Medicine examines the issues for frontline key workers
- Kings College is undertaking an important research initiative on the impact of moral injury on key workers during the current pandemic. A survey can be found here.
Speakers:
Dr. Victoria Williamson is a researcher at King’s College London and the University of Oxford. At King’s College London, Victoria’s research focuses on psychological adjustment after traumatic events, including combat trauma, human trafficking and moral injury. At the University of Oxford, her research aims to identify effective approaches to screen for child anxiety difficulties in schools and deliver an accessible parent-led intervention to support child adjustment.
Dr. Dominic Murphy works at Combat Stress (a national veterans mental health charity in the UK) where he established and now leads a research department specialising in veteran’s mental health. The Combat Stress research department is co-located within King’s College London where Dominic continues to be a member. Dominic is part of the Forces in Mind Trust mental health steering group, editor for a number of journals and member of several international military mental health research consortiums. In 2019, he was elected the President of the UK Psychological Trauma Society (UKPTS) and onto the executive board of the European Society for Traumatic Stress Studies (ESTSS). Dominic has specialised clinically and academically within the field of PTSD and military mental health and is widely published with over 100 articles to date.