| Recipient: | Lawson Health Research Institute |
|---|---|
| Project: | Beliefs about Confidentiality and Attitudes toward Disclosure of Moral Injuries |
| Province: | Ontario |
| Period: | Fiscal year 2019-2020 |
| Funding: | $59, 104 |
Overview:
The Lawson Health Research Institute is an organization based in Ontario, that used funding from the Veteran and Family Well-Being Fund to investigate Veterans' beliefs about confidentiality and attitudes toward disclosure of moral injuries. This study was a ground-breaking initiative that refined the understanding of how moral injury impacts Veterans.
Project goals:
The project’s goals were:
- to better understand how Veterans with moral injuries approach health care; and,
- to determine whether beliefs about confidentiality impact treatment-seeking patterns.
Project activities:
To achieve their goals, Lawson Health Research Institute conducted two studies:
- Study 1 investigated Veterans’ beliefs about medical and research confidentiality and attitudes towards disclosure of moral injuries among 335 CAF Veterans.
- Study 2 explored in greater detail Veterans’ beliefs and attitudes regarding the importance of confidentiality and disclosure of moral injury through on-on-one interviews (completed remotely) with a subset of Veterans from Study 1.
Project results:
This is the first study to provide evidence that moral injury may impact patterns of intentions to seek mental health treatment. It demonstrated that moral injuries may deter individuals from seeking help and disclosing trauma details. It also provided evidence that, overall, moral injuries are more likely to be associated with perceived career harm (above and beyond PTSD). The results will allow clinicians, researchers, and policy-makers to understand whether certain processes, regulations, and policies should be changed in order to facilitate treatment-seeking in Veterans with moral injury and improve rapport in the clinic and research settings.