The Factor Structure of the Spiritual Well-Being Scale in Veterans Experienced Chemical Weapon Exposure

This study aimed to determine the factor structure of the spiritual well-being among a sample of the Iranian veterans. In this methodological research, 211 male veterans of Iran–Iraq warfare completed the Paloutzian and Ellison spiritual well-being scale. Maximum likelihood (ML) with oblique rotation was used to assess domain structure of the spiritual well-being. The construct validity of the scale was assessed using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), convergent validity, and discriminant validity. Reliability was evaluated with Cronbach’s alpha, Theta (θ), and McDonald Omega (Ω) coefficients, intra-class correlation coefficient (ICC), and construct reliability (CR). Results of ML and CFA suggested three factors which were labeled “relationship with God,” “belief in fate and destiny,” and “life optimism.” The ICC, coefficients of the internal consistency, and CR were >.7 for the factors of the scale. Convergent validity and discriminant validity did not fulfill the requirements. The Persian version of spiritual well-being scale demonstrated suitable validity and reliability among the veterans of Iran–Iraq warfare.     

Assessment for the U.S. Army Comprehensive Soldier Fitness program: the Global Assessment Tool

Psychology and the U.S. military have a long history of collaboration. The U.S. Army Comprehensive Soldier Fitness (CSF) program aims to measure the psychosocial strengths and assets of soldiers as well as their problems, to identify those in need of basic training in a given domain as well as those who would benefit from advanced training, and then to provide that training. The goals of the CSF program include the promotion of well-being as well as the prevention of problems. Assessment is the linchpin of the CSF program, and the Global Assessment Tool (GAT) is a self-report survey that measures psychosocial fitness in emotional, social, family, and spiritual domains. We review the history of psychological assessment in the military and the lessons taught by this history. Then we describe the process by which the GAT was developed and evaluated. We conclude with a discussion of pending next steps in the development and use of the GAT.     

Military Moral Injury: An Evidence-Based and Intercultural Approach to Spiritual Care

How can spiritual care help veterans struggling with military moral injury? An evidence-based, intercultural approach to spiritual care is proposed. Evidence-based care uses research on military moral injury and religious and spiritual struggles to understand when religious and spiritual practices, beliefs, and values are helping or harming veterans. Intercultural spiritual care recognizes the complex, distinctive ways veterans’ values, beliefs, coping, and spiritual practices are shaped by interacting cultural systems, especially military training and cultures. Pastoral theologian Larry Graham’s (Sacred Spaces: The E-Journal of the American Association of Pastoral Counselors 5, 146–171, 2017) writing on moral injury and lamentation is used to develop two spiritual care strategies: sharing anguish and interrogating suffering. Spiritual care begins with lamenting the shared anguish of moral injury using intrinsically meaningful spiritual practices to help veterans compassionately accept the emotions arising from moral injury so intensely felt in their bodies. The second strategy is sharing the lament of interrogating suffering through exploring values, beliefs, and coping arising from moral injury. A literary case study of a young female veteran based on Cara Hoffman’s (2014) novel Be Safe, I Love You illustrates this evidence-based intercultural approach to spiritual care of military moral injury.

     

Spirituality and Religion: Neglected Factors in Preventing Veteran Suicide?

The Clay Hunt Suicide Prevention for American Veterans Act, enacted in 2015, aimed to increase access to treatment for U.S. military veterans; however, poor attendance at aftercare and high rates of treatment refusal suggest that, even when treatment is accessible, it may not be acceptable. Often, it is difficult to acknowledge the need for help and to commit to treatment. The stigma of mental illness diminishes the self-respect of individuals with mental health problems and may be especially acute for veterans because of the centrality of resilience in military culture. This stigma also can jeopardize current employment or prospects for future employment. This paper proposes a partial answer to the question, “What more might be done to engage and effectively treat veterans who are at high risk of suicide?” The meaning of spiritual and/or religious expression in human development, well-being, and social functioning has long been of great interest to theorists in disciplines as diverse as sociology, theology, and psychology. Some empirical studies have further suggested that certain religious and/or spiritual beliefs, practices, and/or affiliations may be protective against suicide. This paper (a) summarizes these perspectives, (b) considers how clinical inquiry into the role of religion and/or spirituality in the lives of veterans at high risk of suicide fits into the suicide prevention program of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, and (c) offers specific recommendations to practitioners.     

The dark side of comprehensive soldier fitness

Comprehensive Soldier Fitness (CSF), the focus of the January 2011 special issue of the American Psychologist, is a $125 million resilience training initiative designed to reduce and prevent the adverse psychological consequences of combat for soldiers and veterans. These are worthy goals. Soldiers and veterans deserve the best care possible, and military psychologists have critically important roles to play. But the special issue is troubling in several important respects. Elsewhere, we have offered a detailed review (Eidelson, Pilisuk, & Soldz, 2011). Here we offer only a summary of our concerns. The CSF program is a massive research project launched without pilot testing to determine, first, the effectiveness of the training in a military environment. This is highly irregular and obviously worrisome considering the stakes. No evidence was provided indicating that CSF received preliminary review by an independent ethics review board. There are other ethically fraught possibilities.This special issue reveals much about current moral challenges facing the profession of psychology.     

Group Therapy, Spiritual Issues, and Vietnam Veterans

This article describes a form of therapy that focuses on the spiritual dimension of the experience of American military veterans. Since definitions of spirituality abound, it is important that therapists be able to work with multiple understandings of spirituality simultaneously. Such veterans often resist facing, much less integrating, the spiritual dimension of their experience in therapy. A process is described that uses a VA Chaplain as a co-therapist on a monthly basis in an ongoing group. Telling Biblical stories and parables, in the context of therapy, is reported as a valuable means to enable clients to deal with their spiritual issues.     

Education,queer theology,and spiritual development: disrupting heteronormativity for inclusion in Jewish,Muslim and Christian faith schools

Voices critiquing heteronormativity in faith schools often rely on an understanding of such schools as arbiters for heteronormative religious orthodoxies. Many proponents of Jewish, Muslim and Christian schools offer compelling responses to such claims by providing inclusive perspectives on faith schooling. By applying a queer reading of temporality to a critique of the latter body of work, this paper will argue that these perspectives, despite their commitments to inclusion, have affinities with logics of heteronormativity through their appeal to a language of hospitality that reproduces adherence to heteronormative binaries and identity frames as originary and normative. From here, the paper will suggest that queer theology’s understanding of the transcendent in relation to immanence offers resources for reframing discussions around heteronormativity and faith schools in ways that speak to the inclusive commitments of those critiqued in this paper, while also eschewing reproductive determinism as a basis for understanding spiritual development.     

Sexuality,Angelification, and Divine Indwelling: A Contemporary Ethic of Early Christian Asceticism

The monastic movement originated among laity who recognized within themselves the potential to embody the Christian gospel. That a practice so central to early Christians and their Scriptural understanding would undergo such a decline contemporarily gives pause for reconsideration. This article posits that the kind of asceticism at the core of Christian monasticism maintains relevance as a transformative Christian practice in the contemporary world, as well. The argument draws on a tripartite model of spirituality in accord with Gregory of Nyssa’s notion of epektasis. This suggests asceticism’s contemporary appropriation as an ethic of Christian spiritual development oriented toward perpetual ascent. Asceticism will be analyzed as a form of spiritual struggle; that is, physical, emotional, psychological, intellectual, and spiritual exertion aiming to progress in knowledge, similitude, and intimacy with Jesus Christ, for God and for others. The three stages of this ethic of Christian spiritual growth – 1) detachment from fleshly passions, 2) strengthening of the soul, and 3) union with God – find parallels in the three themes at the core of asceticism: sexuality, angelification, and divine indwelling. Situating asceticism within a framework of spiritual struggle creates an opportunity to recover and re-envision a well-established Christian practice in a contemporary context.     

Glimmers of the infinite: The tragedy of moral injury

Moral injury is a complex wound of the soul affecting many veterans returning from combat. One dimension of moral injury is the shattering of faith, in which service members invest their all into a cause in hope for ultimate fulfillment, only to be morally disappointed by the gruesome reality of warfare. This article will explore the transcendent values that attract service members to military service, and the shattering of faith that can happen during combat, and then suggest an approach for church members to support veterans as they journey on the path to regaining their faith and healing their soul.     

Comprehensive soldier fitness: building resilience in a challenging institutional context

The Comprehensive Soldier Fitness (CSF) program is designed to increase psychological strength and positive performance and to reduce the incidence of maladaptive responses of the entire U.S. Army. Based on the principles of positive psychology, CSF is a historically unique approach to behavioral health in a large (1.1 million members) organization. There are four program elements: (a) the assessment of emotional, social, family, and spiritual fitness; (b) individualized learning modules to improve fitness in these domains; (c) formal resilience training; and (d) training of Army master resilience trainers (MRTs) to instill better thinking skills and resilience in their subordinates. In contrast to traditional approaches, CSF is proactive; rather than waiting to see who has a negative outcome following stress, it provides ways of improving resilience for all members of the Army. CSF aims to move the full spectrum of responses to trauma and adversity-ranging from stress-related disorders to ordinary resilience-toward personal growth. This program may provide a model for implementing similar interventions in other very large institutions.     

Lie scales and the elderly

The results of 11 community-wide studies in which a short form of the Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability scale was administered are summarized. In seven Australian studies significant correlations (ranging from 0.20 to 0.42) were found between the scale and age. In one study having mostly male respondents, however, no significant correlation was found. This led to the data from a ninth study being dissected into males and females. A significant correlation was then found for females only. Two further studies from West Germany and India gave results similar to the Australian findings. The results were interpreted to mean that older women seek to compensate for ‘Loss of looks’ by promoting themselves as having other virtues. These highly meaningful findings from use of a social desirability scale among the elderly tend to rebut attacks on the validity of such scales among the elderly.     

The Japanese version of the overall assessment of the speaker’s experience of stuttering for adults (OASES-A-J): Translation and psychometric evaluation

PurposeThis study evaluates the psychometric performance of the Japanese version of the Overall Assessment of the Speaker’s Experience of Stuttering for Adults (OASES-A), a comprehensive assessment tool of individuals who stutter.MethodsThe OASES-A-J was administered to 200 adults who stutter in Japan. All respondents also evaluated their own speech (SA scale), satisfaction of their own speech (SS scale) and the Japanese translation version of the Modified Erickson Communication Attitude scale (S-24). The test-retest reliability and internal consistency of the OASES-A-J were assessed. To examine the concurrent validity of the questionnaire, Pearson correlation was conducted between the OASES-A-J Impact score and the S-24 scale, SA scale and SS scale. In addition, Pearson correlation among the impact scores of each section and total were calculated to examine the construct validity.ResultsThe OASES-A-J showed a good test-retest reliability (r = 0.81–0.95) and high internal consistency (α > 0.80). Concurrent validity was moderate to high (0.55–0.75). Construct validity was confirmed by the relation between internal consistency in each section and correlation among sections’ impact scores. Japanese adults showed higher negative impact for ‘General Information’, ‘Reactions to Stuttering’ and ‘Quality of Life’ sections.ConclusionThese results suggest that the OASES-A-J is a reliable and valid instrument to measure the impact of stuttering on Japanese adults who stutter. The OASES-A-J could be used as a clinical tool in Japanese stuttering field.     

“Staring into the abyss”: veterans’ accounts of moral injuries and spiritual challenges

The concept moral injury is receiving increased attention, especially as it pertains to military trauma. In war, service members may both observe and directly experience horrific events that one can scarcely prepare for. For some, this can result in a shattering of their assumptive world and loss of meaning. For those who are spiritually oriented, a spiritual or existential crisis may ensue. This qualitative study examines military related spiritual and moral wounds experienced by 23 veterans receiving services at a United States Veteran Administration Medical Center. In these first-person accounts, veterans provide insight into a variety of trauma-related struggles including guilt and shame, loss of trust and betrayal, the search for meaning and for the forgiveness of self and others, loneliness and withdrawal, anger, and negative changes in spiritual beliefs and practices. The findings support a call for additional trauma treatment options that address the spiritual and moral components.     

Selflessness as a Foundation of Spiritual Transcendence: Perspectives From the Neurosciences and Religious Studies

Although of increasing scientific interest, the neurologic foundations of spiritual experiences remain ambiguous due to the neurological complexity of such experiences and the lack of a clear taxonomy of “spiritual experiences.” A previously proposed preliminary neuropsychological model of spirituality (Johnstone & Glass, 2008) suggests that decreased self-orientation (or increased selflessness), associated with reduced right hemisphere/right parietal lobe (RH/RPL) functioning, serves as a neuropsychological foundation of spiritual transcendence (defined as the ability to emotionally and cognitively connect with higher powers beyond the self or experience cosmic unity). This model was based on research that indicates that transcendent spiritual experiences are related to reduced activation of portions of the RH/RPL during religious rituals (e.g., Buddhist meditation, Christian prayer), as well as research that indicates that individuals with RH/RPL dysfunction report increased transcendence. This model has been supported by research with other populations (e.g., brain injury, epilepsy, tumor) and technologies (e.g., repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation), although limitations in the model persist. The current article addresses such weaknesses by demonstrating the existence of “spiritual transcendence” as a psychometrically valid construct, identifying specific self-orientation processes (e.g., physical self, mental self, autobiographical self) that may serve as a foundation for transcendence, and explaining how transcendent experiences can involve both a decreased and enhanced sense of the self. To further support the model, citations from the texts of multiple faith traditions are offered to illustrate the importance of selflessness in transcendent experiences across diverse religions. Suggestions for future research and practical implications are offered.     

The Political Consequences of Combat: Post‐Traumatic Stress and Political Alienation Among Vietnam Veterans

On average, veterans are more civically and politically engaged than civilians. Previous research on the effects of military service, however, did not account for differences in veterans’ combat experiences. Using survey data from a representative sample of Vietnam veterans, this study presents evidence that veterans who were exposed to severe combat trauma and veterans who exhibited attitudes and fears associated with post‐traumatic stress had significantly lower levels of political efficacy and trust. The negative consequences of combat exposure and post‐traumatic stress are not mitigated when veterans have quality social support or when they seek professional counseling. These findings inform political psychology and hold implications for claims regarding the empowering influence of service in the U.S. military, increased political engagement, in particular. Among Vietnam veterans, exposure to severe combat trauma and post‐traumatic stress were both associated with reduced political efficacy and trust.     

American Military Veteran Entrepreneurs: A Comprehensive Profile of Demographic,Service History,and Psychosocial Characteristics

American military veterans are nearly twice as likely to be self-employed compared with nonveterans and are majority owners in 9% of all businesses nationwide. Despite their contribution to the broader economy and the potential for training programs to cultivate and foster successful self-employment and veteran-lead entrepreneurial ventures, research on veteran entrepreneurs remains limited. To gain a better understanding of the potential strengths and vulnerabilities of veteran entrepreneurs, the current study utilized data from a large, nationally representative sample to profile self-employed veterans (n = 230) and compare them with veterans who work as employees (n = 1,055) with respect to demographic, military service history, and psychosocial characteristics. Results indicated that self-employed veterans were older and more educated and more likely to utilize U.S. Department of Veteran’s Affairs (VA) health care. Self-employed veterans were more likely to serve in Vietnam and to serve in the military for fewer years. No differences were noted in perceived military experience, level of combat exposure, or military branch served as a function of self-employment. Although reporting more lifetime traumas, self-employed veterans did not experience higher rates of current or lifetime psychopathology or lower perceived quality of life. Potential protective resilience-promoting factors may be associated with the higher levels of openness, extraversion, optimism, achievement-orientation (purpose in life), and greater need for autonomy and professional development observed among self-employed veterans. Moreover, self-employed veterans demonstrated higher levels of gratitude, community integration, and altruistic service to others. Findings have potential to inform human resources management strategies and vocational training and reintegration initiatives for veterans.     

Building spiritual fitness in the Army: an innovative approach to a vital aspect of human development

This article describes the development of the spiritual fitness component of the Army's Comprehensive Soldier Fitness (CSF) program. Spirituality is defined in the human sense as the journey people take to discover and realize their essential selves and higher order aspirations. Several theoretically and empirically based reasons are articulated for why spirituality is a necessary component of the CSF program: Human spirituality is a significant motivating force, spirituality is a vital resource for human development, and spirituality is a source of struggle that can lead to growth or decline. A conceptual model developed by Sweeney, Hannah, and Snider (2007) is used to identify several psychological structures and processes that facilitate the development of the human spirit. From this model, an educational, computer-based program has been developed to promote spiritual resilience. This program consists of three tiers: (a) building awareness of the self and the human spirit, (b) building awareness of resources to cultivate the human spirit, and (c) building awareness of the human spirit of others. Further research will be needed to evaluate the effectiveness of this innovative and potentially important program.     

A Spiritual Revolution in Denmark?

ABSTRACT

Based on data from the Danish part of the European Values Study 1981–2008, this article explores the validity of the claim for a spiritual revolution as proposed by Paul Heelas and Linda Woodhead. The article suggests an operationalisation of spirituality. The results of the analyses are that religious values—Christian faith as well as spirituality—tend to be stable over an individual’s life course. This suggests that, if there is a spiritual revolution, it must be the product of cohort replacement. If a spiritual revolution is taking place, Christian faith would be expected to decline in younger cohorts while spirituality would increase, but an analysis of cohort support for Christian faith and spirituality from 1981 to 2008 shows that both were constant across cohorts. Thus Danish data contain no indication that a spiritual revolution is taking place or will take place. Finally, we show that, contrary to theoretical expectations, spirituality and Christian faith are strongly correlated. A closer analysis reveals an indirect and more complicated support for parts of the theory since the two variables are explained by different factors and it shows that Christian faith, but not spirituality, is correlated with morality.     

Closeness to God Among Those Doing God’s Work: A Spiritual Well-Being Measure for Clergy

Measuring spiritual well-being among clergy is particularly important given the high relevance of God to their lives, and yet its measurement is prone to problems such as ceiling effects and conflating religious behaviors with spiritual well-being. To create a measure of closeness to God for Christian clergy, we tested survey items at two time points with 1,513 United Methodist Church clergy. The confirmatory factor analysis indicated support for two, six-item factors: Presence and Power of God in Daily Life, and Presence and Power of God in Ministry. The data supported the predictive and concurrent validity of the two factors and evidenced high reliabilities without ceiling effects. This Clergy Spiritual Well-being Scale may be useful to elucidate the relationship among dimensions of health and well-being in clergy populations.