Moral injury

Moral injury doesn't always look like what people expect trauma to look like. It doesn't always centre on fear. More often it looks like guilt that won't quiet, a shift in who you thought you were, a sense of betrayal that's hard to name and harder to explain to the people you love.

Many Veterans carry it for years before anyone gives it a name — and longer still before they find care that addresses it directly.

At the Centre, our moral injury research has had a single practical focus: build the tools and evidence needed so that clinicians and systems can recognize moral injury more consistently, respond more effectively, and track whether support is actually working.

We were part of the core team behind the Moral Injury Outcome Scale (MIOS), now the world's leading recommended clinical questionnaire of moral injury. This tool was built by listening first: to Veterans and frontline clinicians across Canada, the United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom, whose experiences shaped it. In practice, clinicians can now administer the MIOS to identify moral injury, understand the pattern of distress a person is experiencing, and track change over time.

At the system level, it gives organizations like the Canadian Armed Forces and Veterans Affairs Canada a credible way to understand how common moral injury is, where needs are concentrated, and whether programs are having their intended effect.

Over time, this work has made the Centre a trusted source of expertise, seeked out at national policy tables, within military institutions, and in international conversations. That recognition reflects not just the quality of the research, but our orientation to developing practical and impactful work. Because those living with moral injury can't wait forever for support. They need the best of what we know, put to work today.