Resilience as the Road to Mental Readiness? Reflections from an Ethics-of-care Perspective

ABSTRACT

Over the last decade, moral injury in the armed forces has captured the attention of mental health care providers, policy makers and the general public. Military organizations endeavor to prevent and reduce moral injury among their personnel to minimize the tremendous costs incurred on military readiness, government budgets and the well-being of soldiers. This is reflected in training programs that promise to deliver mental readiness and mitigate risks of mental health problems. Our concern is that by focusing on “resilience” as positive policy language, the complexities of situations, including “negative” emotions such as sorrow or fear and the values underlying these emotions, are disregarded. An overly optimistic focus on resilience while overlooking these complications may be counterproductive, and may actually do soldiers harm.

KEYWORDS:

• Resilience training
• moral injury
• ethics of care
• military ethics
• PTSD

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Used with permission.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Eva van Baarle

Eva van Baarle is Assistant Professor of Military Ethics and Philosophy at the Netherlands Defense Academy, Breda, the Netherlands and researcher at the VU University, Amsterdam UMC. Her research focusses on fostering reflective practice and moral competence by means of ethics education.

Tine Molendijk

Tine Molendijk is Assistant Professor Military Ethics and Leadership at the Netherlands Defense Academy, Breda, the Netherlands. Her research focusses on moral injury among Dutch soldiers and veterans.