Total Credits: 1.5
Moral injury is a measurable potential clinical syndrome defined as significantly functionally impairing alterations in: (a) self- and other-perception (i.e., shifts in ideas about personal or collective humanity), (b) moral thinking (i.e., moralistic judgments of oneself and others [e.g., self-censure, condemnation]), (c) social behavior (i.e., social exclusion, social rejection; loss of valued, valuing, and kindred attachments), (d) moral emotions and moods (i.e., the self-conscious emotions of guilt and shame and the other-condemning emotions of anger and disgust), (e) self-harming or self-sabotaging, and (f) changes in beliefs about life meaning and purpose (e.g., emptiness, purposelessness, questioning faith and the meaning of life) indexed to a worst and most currently distressing experience that entails doing or failing to do (agentic) or directly experiencing or bearing witness to (nonagentic) acts that violate the social contract and transgress deeply held moral beliefs and expectations.
In this webinar, participants will gain a comprehensive understanding of Adaptive Disclosure-Enhanced (AD-E), which is an evidence-based, structured, cross-cutting, experiential psychotherapy designed to address chiefly target moral injury. AD-E builds upon the original Adaptive Disclosure framework by integrating letter-writing, mindfulness, and loving-kindness meditation. AD-E prioritizes functional recovery through daily reparative activities aimed at restoring faith in humanity or one’s own humanity and fostering valuing and valued social connections and kindred activities. By the end of this session, participants will understand the social-functional model of morality, moral behavior, and moral injury, understand the symptoms of moral injury and how to assess them, and gain a session-by-session understanding of how Adaptive Disclosure-Enhanced can serve as a versatile and compassionate treatment for moral injury. Potential benefits, as well as common challenges and considerations for practitioners using AD-E, will be reviewed.
Dr. Brett Litz is a clinical psychologist and Professor in the Department Psychological and Brain Sciences at Boston University and a Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Boston University Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine. He is also a research psychologist at the VA Boston Healthcare System, where he directs the mental health core of the Massachusetts Veterans Epidemiological Research and Information Center (MAVERIC). Dr. Litz’s recent research entails generating methods for the measurement-based care of PTSD, and developing methods to promote practice-based research in the DoD and the VA. He has also developed and continues to evaluate a new measure of moral injury as an outcome, the Moral Injury Outcomes Scale (MIOS), and is conducting a VA funded national Veteran population study of the prevalence and impact of moral injury. Dr. Litz just completed a VA funded multisite clinical trial testing an expanded version of Adaptive Disclosure, a treatment designed to treat moral injury and traumatic loss and continues to examine novel ways of helping service members and Veterans with PTSD stemming from moral injury and loss and moral injury and traumatic loss as separable problems. Finally, Dr. Litz has been funded by the state of California, through the Veterans Transition Center of California, to conduct a program evaluation of Veterans Healing Veterans, a Norway model designed to heal trauma and moral injury among incarcerated Veterans in California State Prisons. Dr. Litz is a fellow of the Association of Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies, the American Psychopathological Association, and the Association for Psychological Science.
