Presentation Information
[O-5-03]Moral Injury? Rethinking “Moral Injury” Through the Concept of Ensāniat: Lived Experience of Iranian Refugee Torture Survivors in the UK
*Roghieh Dehghan (University College London(UK))
Keywords:
Torture,Refugees,Moral Injury
This presentation explores the moral and the ethical and their relationship with trauma and mental health from the perspective of Iranian refugee torture survivors in the UK, grounding its analysis in the concept of Ensāniat.
While the concept of moral injury (MI) has gained traction over the past decade as a way to account for experiences that fall outside the parameters of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), its dominant framing remains rooted in Western military psychiatry. Initially coined in the 1990s to describe the experiences of US veterans, MI is defined as the distress that arises when fundamental moral beliefs have been transgressed (Litz et al., 2009). Although increasingly applied to refugee populations, the concept remains largely unadopted to the cultural and lived realities of non-Western survivors, raising ethical and epistemic concerns about its broader use.
Based on recent interview studies with Iranian torture survivors, this study highlights Ensāniat as a key concept in participants’ accounts. I begin by briefly outlining how the concept of MI has been constructed within trauma discourse, including how it has been applied in empirical research with refugee populations. I then present findings from my own research, which introduces Ensāniat, an ethical and culturally embedded framework that emerged from participants’ narratives to articulate the moral and the ethical in their experiences, beyond the binary of injury and repair.
This study contends that the standard model of MI risks perpetuating colonialist assumptions and exacerbating epistemic injustice by conflating, both theoretically and experientially, the standpoint of the moral transgressor with that of the victim. The paper calls for the adoption of alternative terminologies that more accurately and respectfully represents the lived experiences of victims.
While the concept of moral injury (MI) has gained traction over the past decade as a way to account for experiences that fall outside the parameters of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), its dominant framing remains rooted in Western military psychiatry. Initially coined in the 1990s to describe the experiences of US veterans, MI is defined as the distress that arises when fundamental moral beliefs have been transgressed (Litz et al., 2009). Although increasingly applied to refugee populations, the concept remains largely unadopted to the cultural and lived realities of non-Western survivors, raising ethical and epistemic concerns about its broader use.
Based on recent interview studies with Iranian torture survivors, this study highlights Ensāniat as a key concept in participants’ accounts. I begin by briefly outlining how the concept of MI has been constructed within trauma discourse, including how it has been applied in empirical research with refugee populations. I then present findings from my own research, which introduces Ensāniat, an ethical and culturally embedded framework that emerged from participants’ narratives to articulate the moral and the ethical in their experiences, beyond the binary of injury and repair.
This study contends that the standard model of MI risks perpetuating colonialist assumptions and exacerbating epistemic injustice by conflating, both theoretically and experientially, the standpoint of the moral transgressor with that of the victim. The paper calls for the adoption of alternative terminologies that more accurately and respectfully represents the lived experiences of victims.