brian mckenna served for 19 years in the canadian military, twice in afghanistan and bosnia. he says he doesn’t think that recruits can be fully prepared psychologically for what they may face in combat. supplied
“[there were] people in the medical community with no cultural competency in the forces at all, and that can be problematic,” says mckenna.
one area of trauma that a general practitioner may not fully understand is the concept of moral injury, which can be a form of secondary trauma, says hosseiny.
“moral injury is witnessing something that is potentially morally injurious, it doesn’t align with your moral code. rules of engagement didn’t allow you to intervene so when you come back there’s a sense of guilt and shame. that’s what keeps you up at night versus seeing one of your colleagues being killed.”
“we’re going to break a certain amount of people”
mckenna says he experienced the phenomenon while witnessing the look of sheer terror on the faces of the people whose town his armoured vehicle rumbled through.
“when kids are scared of you, even though they shouldn’t be, you see that and you feel it,” he says. “those are some of the things that stick with me more than some of the traumatic stuff.”
he also struggled with not being able to offer food to hungry locals.
“the soldier in me understood that if we start feeding people, the aid agencies won’t do it, the local government will get off the hook and we will have a humanitarian catastrophe outside our gate tomorrow, because when four people get lunch, 10,000 will show up looking for lunch tomorrow,” says mckenna. “the soldier in me understands, but the decent dude i like to think i am doesn’t like watching starving people not get a meal. or knowing about all the child kidnapping that goes on in afghanistan that we couldn’t do anything about. what does that do to young, good canadians?”
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