Purpose Existing quantitative research demonstrates negatively impacted mental health outcomes for people detained in immigration removal centres (IRCs) in the UK. However, there is limited qualitative research on the phenomenology of life inside UK IRCs. The purpose of this paper is to explore the psychosocial stressors experienced by people in detention, the psychological impacts of being detained and the ways in which people express resilience and cope in detention. Design/methodology/approach In-depth interviews were conducted with nine people who had previously been held in UK IRCs. Interview transcripts were analysed using interpretative phenomenological analysis. Findings Participants experienced incredulity and cognitive dissonance at being detained, and found themselves deprived of communication and healthcare needs. These stressors led participants to feel powerless, doubt themselves and their worldviews, and ruminate about their uncertain futures. However, participants also demonstrated resilience, and used proactive behaviours, spirituality and personal relationships to cope in detention. Antonovsky’s (1979) theory on wellbeing – sense of coherence – was found to have particular explanatory value for these findings. Research limitations/implications The sample of participants used in this study was skewed towards male, Iranian asylum seekers, and the findings therefore may have less applicability to the experiences of females, ex-prisoners and people from different geographical and cultural backgrounds. Originality/value This study offers a range of new insights into how detention in the UK impacts on people’s lives. The findings may be useful to policy makers who legislate on and regulate the UK immigration detention system, as well as custodial staff and health and social care practitioners working in IRCs.
Objective: Research on "moral injury" -the psychological wound experienced by military personnel and other "functionaries" whose moral values are violated -has proliferated in recent years. Many psychological researchers, including those in the UK, have subscribed to an increasingly individualised operationalisation of moral injury, with medicalised criteria that closely mirrors PTSD. This trend carries assumptions that have not been comprehensively verified by empirical research. This study aims to explore UK military veterans' experiences of, and challenges to, their moral values in relation to their deployment experiences, without prematurely foreclosing exploration of wider systemic influences.Method: Twelve UK military veterans who served in Afghanistan and/or Iraq were interviewed, and the data was analysed thematically and reflexively. Results: Three interrelated themes were generated: 1)"you've been undermined", 2)"how am I involved in this?", and 3)"civilianised". Conclusions: The analysis suggests that several assumptions privileged in moral injury research may be empirically contradicted, at least in relation to the experiences of UK military veterans. These assumptions include that moral injury: is exclusively driven by individual, episodic acts of commission and omission, invariably leads to guilt, and necessarily bifurcates into variants of either perpetration or betrayal. Instead, participants understood the moral violations they experienced as socially contingent. Rather than "treating" moral injury as a disorder of thinking and feeling located within an individual, the sociallycontextualised understanding of moral injury indicated by this study's findings may prompt the development of psychological and social interventions that understand moral injury as the fallout of what occurs between people and within systems.
Moral injury was originally conceived as a socially-inflicted wound of betrayal experienced by military veterans (Shay, 1994). However, moral injury has since been redefined by psychological researchers as an individualised, predominantly perpetration-driven, and psychopathological phe-
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