Ostroh Academy Scholars Successfully Implementing the "Foreign Veterans, PTSD, and Moral Trauma" Project

November 11, 2024

The Department of Psychology of the National University of Ostroh Academy, in a collaborative effort with the Swedish Defense University (Stockholm), is actively engaged in the research project 'Foreign Veterans, PTSD and Moral Trauma'. This international partnership aims to deepen the understanding of the experience of soldiers and officers in challenging situations during military operations and their impact on their well-being and mental health.

In the context of military operations, service members are impacted by a variety of stressors related to their service, including the impact of traumatic events. Moral distress/injury, similar to PTSD, has a significant impact on mental health, as it includes long-term, more chronic negative states associated with significant functional impairment in important areas such as interpersonal relationships and professional activity, as well as overall quality of life and health. 

The study involved 779 Ukrainian militaries. The results of the Ukrainian survey will be subsequently compared with those of the Swedish one.

At present, a team of Swedish and Ukrainian scholars are working in unison to analyze the data, fostering a more comprehensive understanding of the long-term effects of moral injury in military service members. This collaborative effort also includes the Ukrainian-language adaptation of the psychodiagnostic tools of the Moral Injury Outcome Scale (MIOS-F) (Litz et al., 2022).