Recommended Reading on Veterans, Military Trauma and its Aftermath, and Criminal Justice
Most Americans are now familiar with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and its prevalence among troops. In this groundbreaking new book, David Wood examines the far more pervasive yet less understood experience of those we send to war: moral injury, the violation of our fundamental values of right and wrong that so often occurs in the impossible moral dilemmas of modern conflict. Featuring portraits of combat veterans and leading mental health researchers, along with Wood's personal observations of war and the young Americans deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, WHAT HAVE WE DONE offers an unflinching look at war and those who volunteer for it: the thrill and pride of service and, too often, the scars of moral injury.
What Have We Done
What Have We Done
By placing individual experience in a broader political frame, Judith Herman argues that psychological trauma can be understood only in a social context. She shows surprising parallels between private horrors like child abuse and public horrors like war. Trauma and recovery is essential reading for anyone who seeks to understand how we heal and are healed.
Trauma and Recovery
Trauma and Recovery
Cited as one of the ten most influential psychiatry publications of the past decade, Irvin D. Yalom presents the most recent developments in the field on combining individual and group therapy, the latest information about grief group therapy, and how to modify group work to deal with emerging focal groups.
The Theory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy
The Theory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy
Edward Tick, Ph.D is an expert on PTSD and has spent decades developing healing techniques so effective that clinicians, clergy, spiritual leaders, and veterans' organizations all over the country are studying them. he shows that helaing depends on our understanding of PTSD not as a mere stress disorder, but as a disorder of identity itself. In the terror of war, the very soul can flee, sometimes for life. Tick's methods restore the soul so that the veteran can truly come home to community, family, and self.
War and the Soul: Healing Our Nation's Veterans from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
War and the Soul: Healing Our Nation's Veterans from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
In this culmination of his life's work, Peter A. Levine draws on his broad experience to explain the nature and transformation of trauma in the body, brain, and psyche. In an Unspoken Voice is based on the idea that trauma is neither a disease nor a disorder, but rather an injury caused by fright, helplessness and loss that can be healed by engaging our innate capacity to self-regulate high states of arousal and intense emotions. When we bring together animal instinct and reason, we can become more whole human beings.
In an Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness
In an Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness
Phil Klay takes readers to the front lines of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, asking us to understand what happened there, and what happened to the soldiers who returned. Interwoven with themes of brutality and faith, guilt and fear, helplessness and survival, the characters in these stories struggle to make meaning out of chaos.
Redeployment
Redeployment
Dr. Jonathan Shay is a VA psychiatrist with long experience running peer-support groups for Vietnam combat veterans. His two books, which compare experiences of the vets in his care with descriptions of war and homecoming in Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, are moving, engaging, and full of insight concerning the combat experience and its aftermath. Highly recommended.
Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character
Odysseus in America: Combat Trauma and the Trials of Homecoming
Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character
Odysseus in America: Combat Trauma and the Trials of Homecoming
Rev. Rita Nakashima Brock has pioneered exploration of Moral Injury - a concept central to our program - in her work as founding co-director of the Soul Repair Center at Brite Divinity School, and in her book on the topic. We've been honored to have Rev. Rita as a visitor to the program.
Soul Repair: Recovering from Moral Injury after War
Soul Repair: Recovering from Moral Injury after War
Former Marine Officer Tyler Boudreau's memoir about his time in Iraq. He is an extraordinary writer and this account of outer and inner turmoil is sharp, clear and gripping. The theme of Moral Injury runs throughout.
Packing Inferno: The Unmaking of a Marine
Boudreau addresses Moral Injury more directly in this piece.
The Morally Injured
Packing Inferno: The Unmaking of a Marine
Boudreau addresses Moral Injury more directly in this piece.
The Morally Injured
The Rand Corporation's 2008 study of the psychological and cognitive injuries of war, their consequences, and treatment alternatives.
Invisible Wounds of War
Invisible Wounds of War
A GAINS Center report from their Forum on Combat Veterans, Trauma, and the Justice System. This and other terrific resources can be found on the Justice for Vets website.
Responding to the Needs of Justice-Involved Combat Veterans with Service-Related Trauma and Mental Health Conditions
Responding to the Needs of Justice-Involved Combat Veterans with Service-Related Trauma and Mental Health Conditions