Resilience as the Road to Mental Readiness? Reflections from an Ethics-of-care Perspective

Addressing moral injury in the military

“…Rather than routinely referring personnel experiencing moral distress to a chaplain or psychologist, Berghaus and Cartagena25 argue that leaders can often ameliorate distress by helping members to make meaning of their experiences through discussion after a PMIE (eg, integrated into regular after action reviews) focused on reinforcing the mission, sense of purpose in the activity, acknowledging the moral dilemmas and reinforcing the principles that guide decision making in this context. However, this should not be done in a way that glosses over the moral complexity of experiences, or fails to acknowledge and address negative emotions such as sorrow, guilt and shame; these efforts are more likely to engender, than prevent, MI 27. Consistent with this, Zust and Krauss19 highlight the importance of leadership acknowledging moral dilemmas and helping the individuals affected to actively work through and resolve any resulting moral conflict and create a meaningful narrative.…”

“…Notwithstanding the absence of evidence for the effectiveness of resilience training,26 these authors argue that the moral development of personnel would be best served by combining resilience and ethics training. Similarly, van Baarle and Molendijk27 identify the limitations of traditional resilience training, with its focus on strength and positive meaning-making, in equipping soldiers to deal with the complexity of moral dilemmas and potential feelings of shame, guilt and anger. The authors identify three elements of ethics training that could supplement traditional resilience training: (1) the ‘Socratic attitude’ , listening, postponing judgement and critically examining what you stand for; (2) sharing personal experiences and reflections on moral choices associated with doubt and vulnerability; and (3) relating ethics theory to one’s own experience so that moral struggles are understood as being rooted in culture and social value systems rather than just within oneself.…”

“…Johnson32 delineates four components of reflective practice linked to leaders’ capacity for ethical decision making and moral leadership: (1) deliberate and contemplative thinking; (2) synthesising ideas and making connections between known and new information to help make meaning; (3) using an iterative process to generate deeper levels of learning; and (4) active reflection to intentionally engage and explore thoughts. Further research is needed to establish empirical support for the relationship between fostering reflection on moral dilemmas, MI and resilience 27. Such research should examine MI outcomes for members, comparing those with leaders who employ regular reflective practice with those with leaders who do not.…”