Although the horrors of post-traumatic stress disorder are better understood than ever before, experts say some war veterans are misdiagnosed and may instead be suffering from a complex spiritual wound.
It is a condition that has plagued mankind since the beginning of civilization but is only now getting a name: moral injury.
Moral injury is the crisis of conscience that happens when people do things, fail to do things, or simply witness an act that goes against their deeply held morals and beliefs. The concept was introduced by Jonathan Shay, an American doctor and clinical psychiatrist who traced moral injury themes back to Greek mythology, such as Homer’s “Illiad” and “Odyssey.”
War veteran Michael Yandell was 19 when he enlisted in the U.S. army in 2002. He believed that becoming a soldier was the best thing he could do in response to the 9/11 terrorist attack. He was deployed to Iraq in 2004 for six months.
It wasn’t any single event that left him sleepless, depressed, and “drinking lots” when he returned home. And it wasn’t PTSD. It was the conflict between what he had done and witnessed while in service—children growing up in war zones, morally questionable acts committed for the “greater good,” being part of a violent institution—in contrast to what he had come to believe in: peace, beauty, and the fundamental value of all human life.
