Transitioning Fractured Identities: A Grounded Theory Study of Operational Stress Injuries from Veterans’ Perspectives
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Soldiers who are deployed to military operations are often exposed to unique occupational stressors, particularly when deployed to combat environments. Research has predominantly focused on soldiers’ exposure and experiences of traumatic stress or events which results in the diagnosis of posttraumatic stress disorder. More recently epidemiological research with post 9-11 veterans (those who served in Afghanistan and Iraq) has illustrated that these veterans are experiencing not only posttraumatic stress disorder, but a variety of physiological injures, psychiatric illnesses, and psychosocial challenges. In response, the umbrella term operational stress injuries was introduced to try and capture all injuries and harm, caused by serving within military occupations, regardless of the domain of health. Central to the change of operational stress injuries is not only the language, but also the recognition that there may be injurious components of military service that are currently unidentified or under-researched- including those which may transcend into the spiritual or existential elements of military service. The purpose of this doctoral research was to determine Canadian combat veterans’ perspectives regarding what elements of operational stress injuries they deemed to be most problematic and why. Initial broad searches of military trauma literature indicated that research was predominately focused on the psychological domain of health; (i.e., the development of psychiatric illness from traumatic or stressful experiences), with less understanding of potentially harmful spiritual and existential aspects of soldiers’ experiences. As a result, a systematic review was conducted to synthesize and critically evaluate the relationship between spirituality and mental well-being in post-deployment veterans. Next, a theoretical manuscript was written to discuss points of convergence and divergence when integrating the classical grounded theory method within a patient-oriented research framework. Finally, a patient-oriented research informed classical Grounded Theory study was designed and conducted to create a systematic mid-range theory of operational stress injuries from veterans’ perspectives. Findings from this doctoral research demonstrate that while traumatic stress outcomes such as post-traumatic stress disorder were problematic, most injurious to veterans were what they termed “fracturing experiences” and “limboizing.” Fracturing experiences were largely synonymous with the current classification of moral injury, while limboizing referred to the military-to-civilian transition. Participants identified that from their perspective unresolved morally injurious experiences were the cause of their mental health symptoms, which frequently resulted in formal psychiatric diagnosis and being medically released from the military. More, upon being released, participants struggled to successfully transition to the civilian world which further compounded their psychological, social, and spiritual challenges. Ongoing work to further examine how moral injury may influence veterans’ mental health and their ability to successfully navigate the military-to-civilian transition is crucial, as successfully addressing these injurious components may allow veterans to thrive and not simply survive in their new life.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.031 | 0.026 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.006 | 0.007 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.008 | 0.009 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.008 | 0.007 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.008 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.005 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".