Cited by 43Suicide and Self-Harm StudiesPosttraumatic Stress Disorder ResearchEducation and Military Integration

Meaning in life moderates the association between morally injurious experiences and suicide ideation among U.S. combat veterans: Results from the National Health and Resilience in Veterans Study.

Open access
Corona, Christopher D., Van Orden, Kimberly A., Wisco, Blair E., Pietrzak, Robert H.·2019·Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: Effectively responding to suicide risk among veterans involves further developing understanding of reactions to combat experiences, including life-threatening events, traumatic losses, and morally injurious experiences. An important determinant of whether stressors lead to poor mental health outcomes is the perception of meaning. The current study aimed to determine whether global meaning (i.e., general beliefs, goals, and sense of purpose in life) moderates the relationship between morally injurious experiences and suicide ideation among combat veterans. METHOD: This analysis examined 564 participants in the National Health and Resilience in Veterans Study, which surveyed a nationally representative sample of U.S. military veterans, who reported a history of deployment to a combat zone. Multivariable logistic regressions examined interactions between morally injurious experiences and global meaning as predictors of the likelihood of current suicide ideation. RESULTS: There were significant interactions between global meaning and 2 morally injurious experience subtypes-transgressions by others and betrayal experiences. Higher global meaning was associated with significantly lower likelihood of experiencing suicide ideation at higher levels of transgression by others and betrayal experiences. CONCLUSIONS: Veterans who report higher levels of morally injurious experiences involving transgressions by others and betrayal experiences in the presence of higher levels of global meaning are significantly less likely to experience suicide ideation. Continued research is needed to determine whether interventions aimed at cultivating global meaning may help mitigate suicide risk in combat veterans with high exposure to certain potentially morally injurious experiences. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1037/tra0000475

Cites

39 of 41 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • Moral injury may persist when morally salient experiences are processed through maladaptive, self-referential frameworks that are self-condemning or identity-threatening, disrupting narrative coherence.

    “Developmental and meaning-making models similarly propose that MI may persist when morally salient experiences are processed through maladaptive, self-referential frameworks that are self-condemning or identity-threatening, thereby disrupting narrative coherence (8, 16, 50).”

    From The therapeutic role of self-transcendence in moral injury recovery: theory, mechanisms, and clinical implications (2026) · cites this paper as [50]

    The Introduction (page unavailable) says that how a person makes sense of a perceived moral violation affects distress and impairment, and describes difficulty integrating the event into one’s understanding of the world. It does not specifically describe self-condemning or identity-threatening frameworks, or establish that they cause moral injury to persist by disrupting narrative coherence. (LLM, conf=0.85)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Research works printed but not linked: 3

  1. Corona CD, Wisco B, Gamble S, Pietrzak R, & Van Orden K (2018, April). Moral injury, substance abuse, and suicide ideation among veterans. Poster session presented at the 51st Annual Conference of the American Association of Suicidology, Washington, DC.
  2. Department of Veterans Affairs. (2015). Post-deployment surveillance report (Vol. 1, No. 1). Washington, DC: Epidemiology Program.
  3. Smith A (2012, March). New and innovative applications of logotherapy for the treatment of posttraumatic stress disorder. Paper session presented at the 6th Annual Conference of the American Counseling Association, San Francisco, CA.

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Authors
Corona, C. D., Van Orden, K. A., Wisco, B. E., & Pietrzak, R. H.
Affiliations
United States Department of Veterans Affairs (US)
Venue
Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy
Published
2019-09
Volume
11
Issue
6
Pages
614-620
ISSN
  • 1942-9681 (ISSN-L)
  • 1942-969X
OpenAlex
W2947732028
Cited by
43
References
39
Citations by year
2026: 7 · 2025: 6 · 2024: 10 · 2023: 5 · 2022: 4 · 2021: 7 · 2020: 4
FWCI
4.38
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • Psychological Trauma Theory Research Practice and Policy (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
Funders
  • US Department of Veterans Affairs
  • Canandaigua Veterans Affairs Medical Center
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Suicide and Self-Harm Studies
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Research
  • Social Sciences › Education › Education and Military Integration
Keywords
meaning in life, suicidal ideation, combat veterans, moderation, suicide risk, sense of purpose, military deployment
MeSH terms
Psychological Trauma, War Exposure, Adult, Aged, Aged, 80 and over, Female, Health Surveys, Humans, Interpersonal Relations, Male, Middle Aged, Morals, Social Behavior, United States, Veterans, Resilience, Psychological, Young Adult, Suicidal Ideation

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review