Worldview and Moral Injury: An Exploratory Multiple Case Study on Behavioral Health Providers’ Descriptions of Moral Injury

Abstract

The concept of Moral Injury continues to gain research traction in the helping professional fields. Researchers continue to debate different components of Moral Injury. Defining, assessing, and treating Moral Injury captures much of the psychological literature. Despite this, standardized holistic conceptualization and treatment have yet to be realized. Worldview influences all aspects of every endeavor in human life. As such, this qualitative exploratory multiple case study from a Christian post-positivist position explored how Department of Defense or Veteran Affairs behavioral health providers’ worldview influences their descriptions of the construct of Moral Injury, its morbidity, and how behavioral health providers choose to intervene. This project was guided by case study principles originally presented by Yin (2018), based on holism theory and worldview theory (Haynes, 2009; Koltko-Rivera, 2000), and used the conceptual understanding of Moral Injury presented by Jinkerson (2016). Data was collected through surveys, journaling, and interviews. I used Codebook Template Analysis to analyze the data. Worldview cluster beliefs were shown to potentially influence behavioral health providers’ descriptions of MI construct, morbidity, and treatment. A discussion of the findings and their implications, as well as advisement for future research concludes this report