Social Determinant of Unconventional Resilience: Tactical Engagement with Grief-Processing

Building on our operational model, we will discuss findings from our ethnographic study titled, "The Impact of Catastrophic Injury Exposure on Resilience in Special Operations Surgical Teams," to establish that optimal grief-processing allows Special Operation Forces (SOF) medics to alchemize the intense pain of loss into a pliant palliative posture that shows conscientious concern for others across the deployment cycle. To achieve our goals, we will: 1) provide a brief background on contemporary bereavement studies, death-stacking, and historical grief-processing; 2) define the social determinant of grief-processing as extrapolated from qualitative data; and 3) use qualitative data to thematize various grief processes. We conclude by gesturing to how grief-processing galvanizes SOF medic equanimity amid death discernment, which emphasizes the human fragility inherent in all SOF missions.