Clinical Workshops for Moral Injury

---

Presenter:  Josh Mantz

Length:  2.0 Hours

Format:  Digital (live Zoom session).  

Audience: This training is ideal for behavioral health groups, hospitals, residential treatment centers, intensive outpatient programs, psychotherapy training groups, or researchers who have an interest in psychological trauma or moral injury.  

Summary:

This cross-disciplinary workshop aims to introduce psychotherapists and researchers to the concept of moral injury and its relevance to psychological trauma. This session draws from the disciplines of process-relational philosophy, moral psychology, and psychological trauma to delivery a comprehensive introduction to understanding moral injury. Responsible phenomenological accounts are leveraged to provide a vivid understanding of how potentially morally injurious experiences (PMIE’s) manifest in real-time under traumatic conditions.

Learning Objectives:

(1) Participants will be able to differentiate the 3 sources of psychological trauma including life-threat, traumatic loss, and moral injury.

(2) Participants will be able to distinguish between the symptoms of hyper-arousal and hypo-arousal in PTSD and explain the relationship of each to the three sources of trauma.

(3) Participants will be able to describe the function of the autonomic response (i.e. flight, fight, or freeze) under life-threatening conditions and demonstrate how these experiences can lay foundations for both post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and post-traumatic growth (PTG).   

(4) Participants will be able to define moral injury. They will be able to explain 3 of the primary determinants for moral injury (responsibility, justification, wrongdoing) and describe at least 3 situational variables that can amplify moral trauma.

(5) Participants will be able to evaluate the “moral landscape” of trauma by leveraging the variables of chronicity, intensity, and complexity.