Soul Repair: Recovering from Moral Injury after War PDF

Rating: Author: Rita Nakashima Brock ISBN : Product Detai New from Format: PDF

Download PRETITLE Soul Repair: Recovering from Moral Injury after War POSTTITLE from mediafire, rapishare, and mirror link The first book to explore the idea and effect of moral injury on veterans, their families, and their communities
 
Although veterans make up only 7 percent of the U.S. population, they account for an alarming 20 percent of all suicides. And though treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder has undoubtedly alleviated suffering and allowed many service members returning from combat to transition to civilian life, the suicide rate for veterans under thirty has been increasing. Research by Veterans Administration health professionals and veterans’ own experiences now suggest an ancient but unaddressed wound of war may be a factor: moral injury. This deep-seated sense of transgression includes feelings of shame, grief, meaninglessness, and remorse from having violated core moral beliefs.
 
Rita Nakashima Brock and Gabriella Lettini, who both grew up in families deeply affected by war, have been working closely with vets on what moral injury looks like, how vets cope with it, and what can be done to heal the damage inflicted on soldiers’ consciences. In Soul Repair, the authors tell the stories of four veterans of wars from Vietnam to our current conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan—Camillo “Mac” Bica, Herman Keizer Jr., Pamela Lightsey, and Camilo Mejía—who reveal their experiences of moral injury from war and how they have learned to live with it. Brock and Lettini also explore its effect on families and communities, and the community processes that have gradually helped soldiers with their moral injuries.
 
Soul Repair will help veterans, their families, members of their communities, and clergy understand the impact of war on the consciences of healthy people, support the recovery of moral conscience in society, and restore veterans to civilian life. When a society sends people off to war, it must accept responsibility for returning them home to peace.
 
 Direct download links available for PRETITLE Soul Repair: Recovering from Moral Injury after War [Kindle Edition] POSTTITLE

• Product Details
• Table of Contents
• Reviews

• File Size: 287 KB
• Print Length: 174 pages
• Publisher: Beacon Press; 1 edition (November 6, 2012)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
• Language: English
• ASIN: B007WKEMJG
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• X-Ray:
  Not Enabled
• Lending: Not Enabled
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #87,818 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
  • #30 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Business & Investing > Reference > Ethics
  • #73 in Books > Health, Fitness & Dieting > Mental Health > Post-traumatic Stress Disorder
  • #79 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Politics & Social Sciences > Philosophy > Ethics & Morality
• #30 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Business & Investing > Reference > Ethics
• #73 in Books > Health, Fitness & Dieting > Mental Health > Post-traumatic Stress Disorder
• #79 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Politics & Social Sciences > Philosophy > Ethics & Morality

Soul Repair: Recovering from Moral Injury after War PDF

Veterans of war and the families to whom they come home may be the most neglected and misunderstood sub-population in all of America. The damaging personal and social consequences of this have been incalculable. As this book says over and over again, wars are not left behind when veterans come home.

As a follower of Jesus, thus a compassionate resister/pacifist, I have been saying for years that veterans have been abandoned by the church from both sides: the pacifist churches (Mennonite, etc.) have scapegoated veterans and failed to relate to them as needy fellow humans, and the war-justifying churches have lauded them, telling them they are heroes when their own hearts are telling them that they have been morally damaged in life-threatening ways. On page 102 the authors write: "When a community takes responsibility for helping those with moral injury, it must do so with integrity, rather than by scapegoating individuals or pressuring them to deny what they know to be true." This book can make a great contribution to correcting this problem. It could, in short, revolutionize the thinking of both pacifist and war-justifying churches about war and veterans.

Drawing totally from both their own family experiences of war and the stories of veterans, Brock and Lettini tell the untold story of another collateral damage of war, that which is inflicted on the souls and families of those who join the institution dedicated to killing our fellow human beings.

Few of us would think that any person dealing with veterans who is not conversant with the basic idea and some details about PTSD is prepared or competent for the task. With the publication of this book we are about to discover that any person dealing with veterans who does not understand moral injury and soul repair is not competent or prepared for the task.

But, you get the drift--this is a dangerous book. Read it at the risk of rethinking some of your most cherished ideas.

By John K. Stoner

I've read a number of books about the trauma suffered by war veterans as research for my new novel, Along the Watchtower. Many are deeply moving, with real discussion and interviews about this critical topic. Soul Repair is no exception. But it takes a very different and important approach, viewing the emotional damage caused by war not just as an illness to be treated, but as moral injury. Moral injury is a term the authors use for the fragmentation of our moral sense after we are sent off to war. What damage is done when a society that has given us our ideals, tells us we are going to war to uphold those ideals. And then we discover just the opposite--that we are asked to do what in our deepest being we feel to be morally wrong.

The question is an important one and not asked frequently enough, perhaps because of the political implications (is it a just war?) or perhaps because by asking it, we re compelled to question the concept of war itself.

This is a discussion worth having. Unfortunately, the presentation is not as focused as it could be. The prose style is too unstructured and occasionally rambling, making its arguments less compelling than they might otherwise be.

I'd recommend this book to anyone interested in the traumatic effects on war veterans, and especially the friends and relatives of veterans who returned questioning "why we were there?"

By DaveL