Don't overlook the soul: Spiritual readiness in a holistic approach for enhanced Veteran reintegration

Abstract: I found the target articles by Sheena Eagan and Dov Greenbaum (2025) to be persuasive but not sufficiently comprehensive. For example, the Army’s doctrine on “Holistic Health and Fitness” includes “Spiritual Readiness” as one of the five dimensions of fitness (Department of the Army, 2020b). Both articles focus their concerns about reintegration risks for enhanced service members on matters of social, physical, and legal issues. Neither article addressed the spiritual dimensions of enhancement and the particular ethical considerations of the warfighters’ souls as a component of meaning-making during their return to the civilian sector after their service had concluded. My Open Peer Commentary extends the argument from Eagan’s and Greenbaum’s excellent articles to address this critical dimension in order to mitigate moral and ethical hazards for enhanced veteran reintegration. I will sustain my argument by incorporating the empirical data supporting the correlative relationship between spirituality and resilience for veterans, referencing the statutory and doctrinal relevance of religious support, and exploring the normative benefits of individual and communal spirituality for the reintegrated warfighter.

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