HEALING
tion need not be destiny.”
Does this method actually work?
The results are promising but not
conclusive, in part because the
studies conducted so far were designed as intense, short-term interventions with troops preparing
to go back to war. True healing of a
moral injury seems to take time.
“I don’t think it ever happens in
the therapy,” Nash said, “because
I don’t think the therapy is ever
long enough for that to happen.
All we can do is plant seeds.” But,
he added, “as far as I know that’s
the only route to salvation, and it
ain’t easy and it ain’t quick.”
That was the conclusion of
Gray’s clinical research trial in
which adaptive disclosure therapy was used with 44 active-duty
combat Marines with PTSD and
moral injury. In six 90-minute
sessions, Gray found that the Marines experienced “substantive”
improvement in their symptoms.
So substantive, in fact, that the
study has been expanded to a fiveyear randomized clinical trial.
But success requires a long-term
commitment, Gray wrote in a paper
about the project. The six sessions
“represented the beginning of a
process that the Marine would need
to continue after the formal conclu-
HUFFINGTON
03.16-23.14
sion of the intervention.”
Billie Grimes-Watson’s experience in therapy, last spring in
the San Diego moral injury/moral repair group, underscores how
long it can take to heal moral
injury. Like others, she found it
difficult in those sessions to de-
The Pentagon does not formally
recognize moral injury, and the Navy
refuses to use the term, referring
instead to “inner conflict.”
scribe her deepest wounds.
“I have more than one moral
injury and I used the easier one
and not the bad ones that are
really affecting me,” she said in
December, eight months after she
completed the program.
What she told the group was
“my small one,” about the Iraqi
kids who would flock around U.S.
troops and vehicles on patrol, begging for candy and cigarettes. As
2003 wore on, many of the kids
in Baghdad turned sour, throwing
rocks at American troops. Some
troops started throwing rocks back.
“You could actually see them
get hit pretty hard,” she said.
“It’s something I normally
wouldn’t do, bullying kids — I