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Research has established the prevalence and relevance of moral injury in healthcare workers, though less attention has been paid to the different classes of potentially morally injurious events (PMIEs) experienced by this population and their impact. This exploratory study sought to examine the frequency of self- and other-generated PMIE classes and their associations with demographic characteristics and well-being outcomes among mental healthcare staff.

Secondary analysis of data drawn from two cross-sectional surveys of 267 frontline and leadership staff from mental healthcare settings in the UK was conducted. Responses on the Moral Injury Events Scale and the Short Professional Quality of Life Scale were extracted for analysis.

Betrayal by others was most frequently endorsed (61.8%), whilst self-transgressions were least frequently reported (25.5%). After controlling for the number of PMIE classes experienced, betrayal significantly predicted secondary traumatic stress (p = 0.01) and burnout (p = 0.04). Additionally, other transgressions significantly predicted secondary traumatic stress (p = 0.008). The predictive effects of self-transgressions on burnout, secondary traumatic stress and compassion satisfaction were all nonsignificant after controlling for the number of PMIE classes experienced.

Findings highlight differences in the frequency and impact of self and other PMIEs experienced by healthcare professionals. Reducing cumulative exposure to differential PMIE classes appears to be of critical importance to improving occupational well-being in this group.

To our knowledge, this study is the first to explore the associations between PMIE classes and occupational well-being in a mental healthcare population, inclusive of frontline and leadership staff.

How should researchers navigate and interpret the moral emotions evoked in them in research on trauma? In this reflective essay, the authors discuss their experience as researchers on moral injury (MI) in veterans and police personnel in the Netherlands. Stories of MI usually do not allow for a clear-cut categorization of the affected person as a victim or perpetrator. This ambivalence, in fact, is explicitly part of the concept of MI. It means however that researchers face complicated psychological, ethical and methodological challenges during research on MI.

The authors contemplate these challenges by describing two empirical cases demonstrating the particular moral challenges that emerge in MI research. Drawing from literature on qualitative research and emotions, the authors distil different perspectives on the role of moral emotions in research.

Reflecting on the ambivalent and difficult emotions the authors experienced as researchers when listening to personal accounts of moral injury, the authors offer insights into the necessity and delicacy of navigating between the methodological potential and the ethical and psychological risks of such emotions.

This study is relevant for all researchers examining trauma, in particular when the research is surrounded by complex ethical questions. While the issue of managing emotions in research on trauma is challenging in itself, it is further complicated when the stories related by respondents challenge the researcher's own moral beliefs and values.

The paper combines the systems theoretical perspective on the evolution of societal differentiation and the emergence of codes in communication. By combining the approach by Niklas Luhmann with a historical theology on the development of Christian morality split between God and Devil, it recreates a sociological point of observation on contemporary moral forms by a temporary occupation of the retired Christian Devil.

The article combines a Luhmannian systems theoretical perspective on the evolution of societal differentiation with a concept of emerging codes in communication. The latter is based on on the development of a Christian view of morality being split between God and Devil. It establishes a sociological point of observation on contemporary moral forms through the temporary invocation of the retired figure of the Christian Devil.

The proposed perspective develops a healthy perspective on the exuberant distribution of a health(y) morality across the globe during the pandemic crisis of 2020–21. The temporary invocation of the retired Christian Devil as point of departure in this sociological analysis allows for a disturbing view on the unlimited growth of the morality of health and its inherent dangers of dedifferentiating the highly specialised forms of societal differentiation and organisation.

By applying the diabolical perspective, the analytical framework creates a unique opportunity to observe the moral encodings of semantic forms in detail, while keeping the freedom of scientific enquiry to choose amongst available distinctions in the creation of sound empirical knowledge. This article adopts a neutral stance, for the good of sociological analysis. The applications of the term “evil” to observations of communication are indifferent to anything but itself and its qualities as scientific enquiry.

This study aims to illustrate the special liability regime applying to a nuclear operator for damage caused to individuals, property and natural resources, after the United Arab Emirates (UAE) implemented the Vienna Convention on Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage of 1963 through Federal Law No. 4 of 2012. This paper contrasts this special regime with the default regime of civil liability set out in the UAE Civil Code. The comparison helps clarify the legal nature of nuclear operator liability, the extent of protection it affords to the parties injured in a nuclear incident, the conditions under which it obtains, as well as the different damage headings it allows.

This paper is a desk-based legal research.

The main novelties enshrined in the special liability regime for nuclear facility operators are the adoption of an objective approach (strict liability) and the introduction of exceptions different from those contemplated in the default regime spelled out in the UAE Civil Code, thereby affording greater protection to victims of nuclear leakages.

This paper is a first in-depth commentary of UAE Federal Law No. 4 of 2012 Concerning Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage. Considering the UAE’s dualistic approach to the implementation of international obligations, and the present lack of reliable alternative avenues towards compensation beyond private operator liability, the overview provided here will be of value to regional and international practitioners – including from neighbouring countries to the UAE (Oman, Qatar, Bahrain) – that are not currently signatories to any convention on nuclear liability.

There is substantial research on the experiences, needs and well-being of unaccompanied refugee adolescents, but less is known about existential aspects of their lives. The purpose of the current study is to explore existential meaning-making among unaccompanied refugee children.

The informants in this study are young unaccompanied refugees (n = 30) living in Norway, and young Norwegians (n = 46). The authors undertook a secondary analysis of in-depth qualitative refugee interview data and a quantitative analysis of questionnaire data from Norwegian informants.

Both the refugee youths and the Norwegian youths expressed that social relationships and connections to others were most important for meaning. Moreover, both groups emphasized the importance of relatedness and generativity, i. e. commitment to worldly affairs beyond one’s immediate needs. The main differences between the two groups were related to the significance attached to religion and to loneliness.

The comparison between the two groups is only possible to some degree. Secondary analyses have some limitations, as well as strengths.

The findings may be useful for supporting young refugees, as they provide insights into less-studied aspects of their lives.

The originality of this study lies in the focus on and broad interpretation of meaning, of secondary data analyses, and of comparisons between youths that are refugees versus non-refugees.

As a major concept in sociological theory, estrangement can be understood through a diversity of theoretical lenses. However, there is a tendency among sociologists to identify the idea of estrangement with a version of alienation. In this chapter, I counter this tendency to reduce estrangement to one of its conceptual possibilities. To provide a theoretical analysis of estrangement, I first examine the classical views of the issue. I argue that classical theories – both critical and interpretive – fail to theorize sufficiently self-estrangement, a dimension of the concept that remains underexplored. Thus, I move beyond classical sociology to reconstruct the idea of self-estrangement, drawing on more recent interpretive and critical theories, especially theories of social interaction and the self. Specifically, I discuss several interactional forms of self-estrangement, and the connection between self-estrangement, institutional contexts, emotions and the body. Finally, I consider this concept in the context of civil society. This discussion demonstrates the merits of a focus on self-estrangement applied to the study of political exclusion.

The purpose of this paper is to study the factors affecting the return to work (RTW) of injured workers in an institutional setting where workers’ earnings are fully compensated during the disability period.

The authors use a unique data set matching employer-employee panel data with Italian workers’ compensation records. The authors estimate survival models accounting for workers’ unobserved heterogeneity.

Workers with higher wage growth, higher relative wages and from firms with better histories of stable employment, RTW sooner. More vulnerable workers – immigrants, females, members of smaller firms – also tend to return sooner. But even when we control for such measures of commitment, status, and job security, high-wage workers RTW sooner.

The authors use proxies as measures of commitment and status. The authors study blue-collar workers without finer job qualifications. The authors estimate a reduced form model.

In an institutional environment where the immediate cost of workers’ compensation benefits falls largely on firms, employers seem to pressure those workers whose time off is more costly, i.e., high-wage workers. The lack of evidence of ex post moral hazard behavior also demands for a better understanding of the relationship between benefits and RTW.

Workers who are induced to RTW before full recovery jeopardize their long- term health and employability. Firms that put such pressure on employees might generate social costs that can be particularity high in the case of high productivity workers.

The paper offers the first quantitative analysis of an institutional setting where injured workers face 100 percent benefits replacement rate and have job security. This allows focus on other workers’ or employers’ reasons to speed RTW. It is one of very few economics studies on this topic in the European context, providing implications for human resource managers, state regulators, and unions.

The purpose of this conceptual paper is to demonstrate how memes perpetuate trauma with a schematic. This conceptual paper uses the “begin with the end in mind” meme to format the presentation of the necessary components for the schematic of how trauma persists across generations. It is the third paper in a series of applications of the recursive, test-operate-test schematic to the systemic effects of the information processes involved in trauma. The schematic presented permits evaluations of solutions to interrupt the generational trauma cycle.

The required schematic components are described. Trauma (actual or perceived threat to survival) will be briefly discussed. Evolutionary processes that create the psychophysiology necessary to support nominal social expectations (NSEs) memes and metaphors will be summarized. The development of NSEs will be discussed. Metaphors and memes necessary for the creation of the schematic and esoteric events at level Learning IV will be briefly described. Finally, Figure 3, which illustrates the maintenance of NSEs and attempts to prevent their violation, will be explained.

It is asserted that functional human social behavior requires NSEs. Trauma is found to persist through the presence of anti-nominal NSE memes that are transduced by the individual into anti-nominal metaphors, which then damage grid, place and dentate gyrus cell (GPDG) neurophysiology. The damaged neurocircuits allow the use of anti-nominal NSE metaphors within our individual neurophysiology. Furthermore, anti-NSE memes interfere with the self-organized criticalities (SOCs) of genetic-epigenetic processes necessary for the intergenerational transfer of functional social behavior. When anti-NSE nominal metaphors are transduced back into anti-NSEs, social niche memes, the trauma process is reiterated. Anti-NSE memes and metaphors are found to be inappropriate criteria central to the maintenance of persistent trauma. Therefore, anti-NSE memes have hijacked our epigenetics and our social niches. Solutions are available because during our evolution, the Homo clade developed esoteric capabilities and the ability to bring back what information we can from those encounters. This physiology operates around the 5HT2A neural receptors that process hallucinogens, such as psilocybin. Accessing this resource system, either through naturally occurring altered states of consciousness or through micro-dose pharmaceutical psilocybin and related neurotransmitters, produces a significant structural change in the GPDG system to reset the NSE system illustrated in the schematic to its nominal status so that we can maintain nominal NSE relationships within our meme niche(s).

The source of persistent trauma in our social niche(s), the means by which the trauma is maintained and the means to mitigate and perhaps eliminate persistent trauma are identified. Based on these three conclusions, it is difficult to make decisions regarding corrective actions because of ubiquitous anti-NSE memes and because of the limitations of our ordinary consciousness.

If we wish to survive as a species, we will need to discover the criteria necessary to maintain our niche(s) congruent SOCs and use them instead of tyrannical memes described by Dawkins (1989) to make decisions about ourselves and our niche(s).

Significant courage is required to identify the memes that maintain trauma because many of them are culturally sacred cows. Unfortunately, we have known since Bremner's (1995) MRI study of posttraumatic stress disorder that trauma causes brain damage. Fortunately, our NSE genes compel us to pursue restitution of the memes that maintain our trauma-inducing cultures.

Several original assertions are presented. While the Homo clade ancestors began the creation of the social niche(s) that led to Homo sapiens sapiens, it is asserted that the australopiths created the NSE memes which are the foundation behaviors that permit our social niche(s). Furthermore, NSEs were produced by enhanced intentionality skills and NSEs were created by both genetic and memetic processes. The evolution of intentionality-NSE neural networks is asserted as the source of intentional material manipulation. While anti-NSE memes are claimed as the source of persistent trauma, the practice of esoteric technologies is presented as a solution to persistent trauma.

Based on the stimulus-organism-response (SOR) model and Transactional Model of Stress and Coping, the current study aims to investigate the direct effects of workplace bullying (WPB) on internal whistleblowing (IW) and workplace withdrawal (WW), as well as the indirect effects, including the mediating role of moral injury (MI) and moderating role of inclusive leadership (IL) in the hospitality sector.

Three-waves approach was used to collect data from 266 hotel employees in India. AMOS 21 and Macro-PROCESS were used to analyse the hypothesised relationships.

WPB has a direct effect on IW and workplace withdrawal. MI mediated the relationship between WPB and IW and WPB and WW. Further, IL moderated the relationship between WPB and MI.

The results of the current study have significant policy-related, academic and practical implications. Executives must be aware of WPB incidents and take prompt action to completely stop them.

The study contributes to the literature by analysing the role of MI as a mediator for the relationship between WPB and WPB's coping strategies like IW and workplace withdrawal. This study also answers repeated calls for more research on MI and MI's consequences.

In the previous chapter, I introduced trauma-informed care as an approach to organisational change and a shift in culture to recognise that many employees and people attending services have past trauma experiences. In this chapter, I recast servant leadership (SL) as a trauma-informed leadership model that naturally operationalises some of the principles discussed in the TIA literature. The first section of this chapter addresses the societal need for a more ethical and moral leadership approach, before briefly outlining the prevalence of trauma experienced by service users and employees. The next section provides an overview and definition of SL in a general sense, before articulating a trauma-informed model of SL and its characteristics. Finally, some of the outcomes associated with SL are discussed with a key focus on how this approach operationalises the principle of psychological safety, trust and empowerment found in trauma-informed approaches, as they relate to employees.