HEALING
perience over and over, until the
fear subsides. But for a medic, say,
whose pain comes not from fear
but from losing a patient, being
forced to repeatedly recall that
experience only drives the pain
deeper, therapists have found.
“Medication doesn’t fix this
stuff,” said Army psychologist
John Rigg, who sees returning
combat troops at Fort Gordon,
Ga. Instead, therapists focus on
helping morally injured patients
accept that wrong was done, but
that it need not define their lives.
On the battlefield, some have
devised makeshift rituals of
cleansing and forgiveness. At the
end of a brutal 12-month combat tour in Iraq, one battalion
chaplain gathered the troops and
handed out slips of paper. He
asked the soldiers to jot down
everything they were sorry for,
ashamed of, angry about or regretted. The papers went into a makeshift stone baptismal font, and
as the soldiers stood silently in a
circle, the papers burned to ash.
“It was sort of a ritual of forgiveness,” said the chaplain, Lt.
Col. Doug Etter of the Pennsylvania National Guard. “The idea
was to leave all the most troubling
things behind in Iraq.”
HUFFINGTON
03.16-23.14
But by and large, those with
moral injury are on their own.
‘A TOUCHY SUBJECT’
Brett Litz, a clinical psychologist
and professor at Boston University who is affiliated with the VA
in Boston, has done pioneering
work in defining and treating moral injury. “We have no illusion of
quick-fix cure for serious and sustained moral injury,” he said.
A few academic researchers
and therapists scattered across
the country are experimenting
with new forms of therapy, some
adapting ideas that have worked
with patients suffering from PTSD
and other forms of war trauma.
The Pentagon ha 2V