Moral injuries and grief
In military and RCMP service, there may be situations that challenge, compromise, or threaten your personal values and beliefs, your understanding of human decency, or your sense of right and wrong. These events can result in moral injuries that affect your emotions, behaviour, and relationships. Some of these responses can be very intense, while others can come and go quickly.
You may experience grief because, among other losses, the moral injury has shattered your assumptions about the world, and what you thought your career would be.
These kinds of losses aren’t always easy to recognize or admit to yourself or others. They can be the source of deep pain and can have a major impact on your life. At the time of the event, you may have needed to maintain a sharp focus to survive and do your job. Since then, your thoughts and feelings may have changed as you consider what happened.
Events that may result in moral injury
Some examples of events that may cause moral injury include:
- Inability to act to prevent injury, death, or atrocities due to policies, role, or lack of resources,
- Orders by superiors that contradict your moral code,
- Exposure to atrocities and death,
- Having to kill or injure someone to save another person or yourself,
- Witnessing the aftermath of tragedy, catastrophic injury, and the state of dead bodies,
- Incidence where children are injured or killed,
- Offenders who are set free only to seriously injure or kill others,
- Experiencing or witnessing discrimination,
- Being unable to practice cultural traditions and feeling like you are losing your culture.
More resources
- Atlas Institute for Veterans and Families