Friday Flick: Almost Sunrise

October Friday Flick: Almost Sunrise

This month’s Friday Flick is hosted by the UUSG Veterans Group. Please plan on joining us in the Common Room October 26, at 7pm, for this informative film on awareness and treatment of Moral Injury.

Almost Sunrise tells the inspiring story of two young men, Tom Voss and Anthony Anderson, who, in an attempt to put their haunting Iraq combat experiences behind them, embark on an extraordinary journey – a 2,700 mile trek on foot across America.

The film also acts as an urgent call for communities to better understand these deep-seated psychic wounds caused by a condition called “moral injury”. Moral injury is a relatively new concept that involves psychological and spiritual wounds that result from experiences that conflict with one’s deeply held beliefs of right and wrong. The key precondition for moral injury is an act of transgression, which shatters moral and ethical expectations. The injury can arise in a variety of forms ranging from perpetrating, failing to prevent, bearing witness to, or learning about acts that transgress deeply held moral beliefs and expectations. It is the resulting loss of the sense of personal worth from the moral injury that leads to overwhelming guilt, depression, and thoughts of self-harm. And moral injury as a diagnosis separate from PTSD better explains some of the recent spike in veteran suicides. Almost Sunrise acts as an urgent call for communities to better understand these deep-seated psychic wounds, and for the government to acknowledge and finally treat moral pain by using methods other than pills. Almost Sunrise deftly and movingly demonstrates the promise of holistic healing practices which the VA and private counselors are using to address this newly recognized condition.