These findings provide preliminary evidence that difficulties with meaning making could serve as a mediating pathway for how MIEs increase the risk for adjustment problems after warzone service, but that other factors associated with moral injury also have a bearing on psychological functioning among Veterans.

Objectives: Theoretical support for the moral injury (MI) construct is mounting, yet empirical support has lagged behind. A conceptual model has been proposed, but studieshave not yet explored the constellation of symptoms within treatment-seeking Veterans. Methods: Veterans (N = 212) seeking trauma recovery services completed measures of potential MI symptoms that functioned as indicators in person-centered Latent Profile Analysis. Differences in exposure to potentially morally injurious experiences (pMIEs) were compared across profiles using logistic regression. Results: Three profiles emerged that varied by symptom severity, levels of trauma-related guilt, and levels of dispositional forgiveness. Exposure to pMIEs predicted membership in a class consistent with proposed MI symptomatology.Conclusions: Person-centered approaches are useful for identifying a distinct group of veterans whose trauma recovery may benefit from specifically targeting moral emotions, consistent with the emerging construct of MI . K E Y W O R D S guilt, moral injury, PTSD, trauma, Veterans J. Clin. Psychol. 2019;75:499-519.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/jclp

Meaning made of stress has been shown to be a unique predictor of mental and physical health. In this study, we examined the unique associations between two facets of meaning made of stress (comprehensibility and footing in the world) and suicide risk and life-threatening behavior among military veterans who have transitioned to college were examined, controlling for demographic factors, religiousness, combat-related physical injury, combat exposure, depressive symptoms, and posttraumatic stress symptoms. Findings suggest that comprehensibility (having “made sense” of a stressor) is uniquely associated with lower suicide risk and a lower likelihood of driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol and engaging in self-mutilating behaviors.

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