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The impact of moral injury on the wellbeing of UK military veterans

BACKGROUND: Experiences of potentially morally injurious events (PMIEs) have been found to negatively impact the mental health of US personnel/veterans, yet little is known about the effect of PMIEs on the mental health of the UK Armed Forces (AF). This cross-sectional study aimed to examine the ass...

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Autores principales: Williamson, Victoria, Murphy, Dominic, Stevelink, Sharon A. M., Allen, Shannon, Jones, Edgar, Greenberg, Neil
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8097892/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33952352
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40359-021-00578-7
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author Williamson, Victoria
Murphy, Dominic
Stevelink, Sharon A. M.
Allen, Shannon
Jones, Edgar
Greenberg, Neil
author_facet Williamson, Victoria
Murphy, Dominic
Stevelink, Sharon A. M.
Allen, Shannon
Jones, Edgar
Greenberg, Neil
author_sort Williamson, Victoria
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Experiences of potentially morally injurious events (PMIEs) have been found to negatively impact the mental health of US personnel/veterans, yet little is known about the effect of PMIEs on the mental health of the UK Armed Forces (AF). This cross-sectional study aimed to examine the association between PMIEs and the mental health outcomes of UK AF veterans. METHOD: Assessments of PMIE exposure and self-report measures of common mental disorders were administered using an online questionnaire to 204 UK veterans. Subjects were classified as having experienced a morally injurious event (n = 66), a non-morally injurious traumatic event (n = 57), a ‘mixed’ event (n = 31), or no event (n = 50). RESULTS: Potentially morally injurious experiences were associated with adverse mental health outcomes, including likely anxiety disorders and suicidal ideation, compared to those who reported no event exposure. The likelihood of meeting criteria for probable PTSD was greatest in those who had experienced a non-morally injurious trauma. No statistically significant association between alcohol misuse and experiencing a PMIE or traumatic event was observed. CONCLUSIONS: The results provide preliminary evidence that potentially morally injurious experiences are associated with adverse mental health outcomes in UK AF veterans. Further work is needed to better understand the interplay between morally injurious events and threat-based trauma in order to design effective pathways for prevention and intervention for people exposed to highly challenging events.
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spelling pubmed-80978922021-05-05 The impact of moral injury on the wellbeing of UK military veterans Williamson, Victoria Murphy, Dominic Stevelink, Sharon A. M. Allen, Shannon Jones, Edgar Greenberg, Neil BMC Psychol Research Article BACKGROUND: Experiences of potentially morally injurious events (PMIEs) have been found to negatively impact the mental health of US personnel/veterans, yet little is known about the effect of PMIEs on the mental health of the UK Armed Forces (AF). This cross-sectional study aimed to examine the association between PMIEs and the mental health outcomes of UK AF veterans. METHOD: Assessments of PMIE exposure and self-report measures of common mental disorders were administered using an online questionnaire to 204 UK veterans. Subjects were classified as having experienced a morally injurious event (n = 66), a non-morally injurious traumatic event (n = 57), a ‘mixed’ event (n = 31), or no event (n = 50). RESULTS: Potentially morally injurious experiences were associated with adverse mental health outcomes, including likely anxiety disorders and suicidal ideation, compared to those who reported no event exposure. The likelihood of meeting criteria for probable PTSD was greatest in those who had experienced a non-morally injurious trauma. No statistically significant association between alcohol misuse and experiencing a PMIE or traumatic event was observed. CONCLUSIONS: The results provide preliminary evidence that potentially morally injurious experiences are associated with adverse mental health outcomes in UK AF veterans. Further work is needed to better understand the interplay between morally injurious events and threat-based trauma in order to design effective pathways for prevention and intervention for people exposed to highly challenging events. BioMed Central 2021-05-05 /pmc/articles/PMC8097892/ /pubmed/33952352 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40359-021-00578-7 Text en © The Author(s) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Research Article
Williamson, Victoria
Murphy, Dominic
Stevelink, Sharon A. M.
Allen, Shannon
Jones, Edgar
Greenberg, Neil
The impact of moral injury on the wellbeing of UK military veterans
title The impact of moral injury on the wellbeing of UK military veterans
title_full The impact of moral injury on the wellbeing of UK military veterans
title_fullStr The impact of moral injury on the wellbeing of UK military veterans
title_full_unstemmed The impact of moral injury on the wellbeing of UK military veterans
title_short The impact of moral injury on the wellbeing of UK military veterans
title_sort impact of moral injury on the wellbeing of uk military veterans
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8097892/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33952352
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40359-021-00578-7
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