Navigating Moral Injury and Trauma in US Army Soldiers: A Holistic Approach Incorporating Self-Care, CBT, Personal Strength, and Spiritual Resilience

This study explores a holistic approach to addressing trauma and moral injury in US Army soldiers, integrating four key elements: self-care, cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), personal strength, and spiritual resilience. Moral injury and trauma are essential experiences for military people at war that both challenge the individual's psychological and existential frameworks. The proposed multifaceted approach aims to provide comprehensive support by addressing physical, emotional, cognitive, and spiritual aspects of well-being. Self-care practices form the foundation for overall health, while CBT offers tools for restructuring maladaptive thought patterns. Personal health is the basis of general well-being, and CBT is a set of skills that can change negative, distorted thinking patterns. The personal strength approaches include Resilience and post-trauma growth, where soldiers are encouraged to acknowledge their strengths. Spiritual resilience activities also build the subject's meaning and purpose for life to deal with moral dilemmas. Thus, the outlined approach provides an opportunity to adjust the work with participants depending on their needs and consider patient-oriented goals, providing the possibilities for their recovery and personal development during a more extended period. Aspects of this paper include analyzing activities and directions of these components, potential combined impacts of the components, and combined approaches of all the elements to adequately respond to multiple facets of well-being. While further research is needed to confirm this approach fully, its comprehensive nature and alignment with evidence-based practices suggest significant potential for supporting US Army soldiers in overcoming the impacts of moral injury and trauma.