Consulting After Combat: Interviewing Veterans to Develop a Therapy to Restore Functioning and Reintegration After Moral Injury Events

Despite the VA's best efforts to treat the psychosocial impact of war, many combat Veterans report lingering difficulty reintegrating into meaningful post-deployment lives. War is among the most extreme forms of human experience but, for many, wartime trauma was treated using models transported from civilian single-incident trauma contexts. Veterans have unique needs and experiences that require culturally responsive and sensitive conceptualizations and treatments. Patient-centered care is improved by providing multiple effective treatment options and this project, if successful, could have a significant impact on VA care. This CDA-2 project has the potential to offer innovative treatment for traumatized combat Veterans who otherwise may not find full relief from PTSD. Clinical research practice will be advanced by employing state-of-the-art user-centered design methods combined with expert clinical feedback to develop an effective and usable group treatment manual that will meet VA needs.

Approximately 25% of combat Veterans with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) seek treatment for traumas that involve potentially morally injurious events (PMIE) rather than danger-based traumas. PMIEs are more strongly associated with functional and psychiatric impairment than life-threat-based combat. Veterans report that PMIEs disrupt their sense of identity and meaning, ability to connect with and trust others, and engender disturbing guilt, shame, rage, and disgust. The sequelae of exposure to PMIEs, otherwise known as moral injury, may explain variance in post-deployment recovery and is a potential unaddressed treatment target. Existing first-line treatments may be limited because they were derived from civilian contexts, poorly fit the war zone context, and do not allow Veterans to discuss the details of the PMIEs with other Veterans. This project will develop a relational dynamic-based group therapy treatment manual that will target functioning and quality of life among Veterans who are impacted by high magnitude PMIEs. The goal of this relational dynamic trauma therapy is to help Veterans identify connections between their current symptoms and their experiences in combat/PMIEs, their current life stressors and relationships, and the historical factors that carry person-specific meaning to their trauma/PMIE. These explorations take place in the presence of attuned and sympathetic others who can resonate to the experience and the affect being expressed. Symptom reduction occurs through increasing the Veteran's capacity to consciously reflect on their experiences and develop an integrated self-awareness of the various factors that affect their mental states. The result is greater self-reflection, less avoidance, and greater adaptive incorporation of life experiences and their aftermath and meanings into one's inner world. This CDA-2 will employ innovative user-centered design methods that continuously gather user experiences during treatment development, with the goal of increased effectiveness and usability. User feedback will be synthesized with formative feedback from a clinical expert panel. This objective will be accomplished by pursuing these specific aims: Aim 1: Discover user needs and preferences as well as treatment-engagement barriers and facilitators from the perspectives of PMIE-impacted Veterans and VA trauma clinicians. Aim 2: Design a treatment manual and refine it using feedback from Veterans, trauma clinicians, and an expert clinical advisory board. Aim 3: Conduct two rapid prototyping open trials (i.e., tangibly testing treatment approaches using a prototype manual) with PMIE-impacted Veterans (N = \~12), and iteratively revise the manual based on Veteran, provider, and clinical expert panel feedback, with the following hypothesis: The treatment manual will meet usability, feasibility, learnability, and acceptability criteria.