The Continued Conflation of PTSD and Moral Injury

This article in the BBC has this to say:

It will be used to employ extra psychiatrists and medical advisers, run counselling sessions and help workers deal with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) [emphasis added].

It goes on to state:

Dr Neal, who is head of Aneurin Bevan University Health Board’s wellbeing service, added staff could be sustaining “moral injury” from the pandemic.

Moral injury most often occurs when a person commits, fails to prevent or witnesses an act that goes against their moral beliefs

This conflation troubles me greatly as I believe that PTSD and Moral Injury, are very separate things: yes, they can be co-morbid, but the symptoms point to two completely different things. PTSD has an outward orientation: it is based on something that happens externally to the psyche. In contrast, moral injury is about interiority, it may relate to an external event, but is symptomatic of an internal ethical or moral dilemma. Due to this, I am troubled by the tremendous volume of recent mainstream articles referencing moral injury that does not make this distinction.

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