Moral Injury in Clinical Work: Recognition, Repair, and Resilience

Moral injury is increasingly recognised as a distinct and clinically significant form of distress, yet it is often misidentified as trauma, depression, or burnout. Unlike fear-based conditions, moral injury centres on questions of identity, responsibility, and ethical meaning — leaving clients grappling with guilt, shame, betrayal, and a profound sense of having violated what matters most. This course provides a comprehensive, clinically grounded framework for understanding and working with moral injury across diverse contexts, including healthcare, emergency services, and everyday life. You will learn how to differentiate moral injury from related constructs, recognise its presentation in therapy, and conduct nuanced, meaning-oriented assessment. The course also explores evidence-informed therapeutic approaches, including responsibility mapping, compassion-focused work, and ACT-informed interventions. In addition, you will examine the impact of moral injury on your own professional identity, including parallel process and systemic constraint. With a strong emphasis on cultural responsiveness, ethical complexity, and multi-level repair, this course supports you to move beyond symptom reduction toward integration, moral repair, and values-based re-engagement.