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A Discussion of Moral Injury and PTSD: How They Differ, and How They're Related

Aired on Monday, January 28th.

On this installment of StudioTulsa Medical Monday, a timely conversation with two community leaders who are both involved with the Tulsa Community Service Council, and who are both, moreover, U.S. Military veterans: Dr. Erv Janssen and Jim Lyall. They join us to define and discuss the experience known as moral injury -- an affliction that's similar to post-traumatic stress disorder, yet which also differs from PTSD in several important ways. As was noted of this phenomenon in an in-depth series of articles that ran a few years ago in The Huffington Post: "Moral injury is a relatively new concept that seems to describe what many [soldiers and veterans] feel: a sense that their fundamental understanding of right and wrong has been violated, and the grief, numbness, or guilt that often ensues. Here, you will meet combat veterans struggling with the moral and ethical ambiguities of war. You will hear from some of the researchers and therapists working to help them cope, and you will come to understand some of the demons that veterans bring home from battle. However we individually feel about the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, these enduring moral wounds, to young Americans who fought on our behalf, must be counted among the ultimate costs."

Rich Fisher passed through KWGS about thirty years ago, and just never left. Today, he is the general manager of Public Radio Tulsa, and the host of KWGS’s public affairs program, StudioTulsa, which celebrated its twentieth anniversary in August 2012 . As host of StudioTulsa, Rich has conducted roughly four thousand long-form interviews with local, national, and international figures in the arts, humanities, sciences, and government. Very few interviews have gone smoothly. Despite this, he has been honored for his work by several organizations including the Governor's Arts Award for Media by the State Arts Council, a Harwelden Award from the Arts & Humanities Council of Tulsa, and was named one of the “99 Great Things About Oklahoma” in 2000 by Oklahoma Today magazine.
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