Reconsolidation of Traumatic Memories (RTM) for Moral Injury

Moral injury can be removed through a proper process of healing, but the process of healing always takes time and there is no guarantee that the process will succeed and that the person who has experienced it will not come back with a new moral injury.

Moral injury is the process in which people who witness others suffer, perceive others suffer, or learn about others suffer, experience great pain or suffer great fear as a result, suffer from feelings of guilt or remorse, doubt, distress and shame, or suffer from post-traumatic distress. Moral injury occurs when people feel that their actions are insufficiently acceptable, inappropriate, or just are morally incongruent, and it causes distress and shame. It tends to cause people to withdraw from the actions they took. For example, they want to say they are sorry to someone with whom they have worked. However, people may be unaware of their guilt or embarrassment about what they have been feeling about the person they are saying thanks to.

Moral injury is significantly prevalent in the United States; at least 1.2% of the U.S population experienced some form of moral injury over a year. In comparison to similar studies in the United Kingdom and Australia, moral injury is more likely to be experienced by men, the less educated, those in the lower socio-economic status, and in the workplace; and by Christians, particularly Catholics and Methodists.

Moleshed, a treatment for moral injury, was frequently self-medicated by patients, who typically felt better after the procedure. The procedure could be considered as a first step in the development of an effective moral injury management program for clinical psychiatric settings.

In all three types of crimes, an offender used violence to intimidate the public before committing the crime. The offender's motive may include a sense of pride or shame. A community with a high level of social order may be more susceptible to moral injury because of its ability to deter violent behavior.

Moral injury is a new concept and requires further study to be fully understood. Data from a recent study shows the need for a public health approach to the prevention of moral injury.

rtm could significantly reduce the intensity of traumatic memories with very minimal side effects, with the exception of stress levels. The combination of rtm and exposure therapy was found to reduce the intensity of traumatic memories especially when there were other types of trauma.

There is a period of rtm consolidation that follows exposure to traumatic stimuli in animal paradigms of post-traumatic memory consolidation. The question remains how rtm consolidation may function to influence post-traumatic symptomatology. Recent research suggests that rtm consolidation may be essential for maintenance of post-traumatic stress symptoms. There is therefore a strong clinical relevance to understand what constitutes a satisfactory 'therapeutic window' (twee) for rtm consolidation.

Moral injury seems common in this sample, yet as a type of traumatic stress is often overlooked and underdiagnosed, our findings underscore the need to consider moral injury as a potential component of trauma assessment and treatment, especially in familial settings and to the extent this is ignored the risks for impaired psychological and physical health and wellbeing.

A new concept for treating moral injury has been introduced by applying the notion of medical ethics as a clinical science, which brings together research findings from other medical fields. Future studies are needed to examine clinical manifestations and determinants of moral injury.

rtm can be defined as the retrieval of a previously encoded traumatic memory in the service of trauma-related motivation, and it can have a powerful influence on the person's psychological well-being. To a small degree, this phenomenon occurs every day. Unfortunately, there are often various risks and hazards involved in the process, including emotional distress and the introduction of untoward outcomes. rtm was originally designed to investigate a potential treatment intervention for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), but this particular intervention has since been integrated into various other treatments for a wide spectrum of psychological disorders and psychiatric disorders.