Dr. Eileen A. Dombo on Moral Injury

Any way you look at it, the U.S.-led War on Terror has been a costly venture: a half-million lives lost so far, including nearly seven-thousand U.S. Military personnel killed in action, and more than seven trillion in U.S. tax dollars spent fighting the enemies of freedom and the values we hold dear. And while some 50,000 American service members and veterans bear scars from the physical wounds of combat in the nation's longest war, many also nurse bruises to the soul - scars of "moral injury," a condition that grows when one commits an act that goes against his or her deepest-held values. Battlefields are fertile ground for moral injury, because those deployed must make snap life-or-death decisions that don't always turn out to be the right choices with sometimes devastating consequences. In this edition of Catholic Military Life, the only official podcast of the Archdiocese for the Military Services, USA, Dr. Eileen A. Dombo, PhD, LICSW, Associate Professor and Assistant Dean at the National Catholic School of Social Service, explains what moral injury is, how it differs from post traumatic stress, and ways the afflicted can seek healing to what experts have described as the "signature wound" of the current generation of veterans.