The Conscience-in-Adversity Data Collection for the Further Study of Moral Injury

Abstract

Background. In matters of conscience, we are always learning. When conscience becomes a casualty of adverse life experiences, we are called upon in our healing professions to bind the moral wounds and attend the moral injuries we encounter in the light of whatever knowledge of moral nature and nurture we have acquired, meager as it may be. Objective. To enable further studies of the continuum of casualty in personal conscience that will enlarge and transmit the fund of knowledge in our healing professions. Method. Presentation of a data collection comprised of 125 identity-protected cases, developed from conscience sensitive psychiatric interviews conducted, consecutively, over a three-year period in a residential treatment center which was dedicated to youth who had been reared in adverse life circumstances.