LAY SUMMARY Public safety personnel (PSP), like police officers, firefighters, and paramedics, often face stressful situations at work in which their moral values are violated. These experiences place PSP at risk for moral injury. Moral injury is a type of mental health experience that can greatly affect how someone feels and behaves. This study aimed to understand whether and how moral injury relates to different coping methods and supports that PSP may regularly use. The results showed that organizational support, spiritual well-being, self-compassion, and social support were each associated with less moral injury. These results will help inform prevention and intervention strategies for PSP experiencing moral injury.
Introduction: Public safety personnel (PSP) are at increased risk of exposure to potentially morally injurious events (PMIEs) and moral injury because of the nature of their work. The purpose of this study was to explore how moral injury relates to coping strategies and supports that PSP may use to care for their mental health. Method: Between June 2022 and June 2023, PSP were invited to participate in an online survey that indexed socio-demographic information, moral injury (with shame and trust violation sub-scales), perceived organizational support, social support, spiritual well-being, self-compassion, alcohol use, cannabis use, and childhood adversity. Hierarchical multiple linear regressions were constructed to assess the relations between coping strategies and supports and 1) overall moral injury, 2) shame-related moral injury, and 3) trust-violation-related moral injury, controlling for age, mental health history, and childhood adversity. Results: Moral injury was negatively associated with perceived organizational support, spiritual well-being, and self-compassion. Shame-related moral injury was negatively associated with spiritual well-being, self-compassion, and social support. Finally, trust-violation-related moral injury was positively associated with alcohol use and negatively associated with perceived organizational support and spiritual well-being. Discussion: Although PSP and related groups may continue to experience moral injury because of job-related duties, there may be room to intervene via spiritually informed resources, self-compassion training, and social and organizational support.