Background: Efficient prevention of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) needs to target individuals with an increased risk for adverse outcome after trauma. Prognostic or prescriptive biological markers assessed early posttrauma may inform personalized treatment recommendations.

Objective: To test prognostic and prescriptive effects of early (posttraumatic) autonomic and endocrine markers on PTSD symptom development.

Moral injury (MI) may occur in the context of committing transgressions (i.e., self‐directed MI reactions), witnessing transgressions, or being the victims of others’ transgressions (i.e., other‐directed MI reactions) that violate an individual's moral principles. Veterans with MI may experience impaired social well‐being (SWB).

Background: Suicidal behavior is the result of complex interactions between many different factors that change over time. A network perspective may improve our understanding of these complex dynamics. Within the network perspective, psychopathology is considered to be a consequence of symptoms that directly interact with one another in a network structure. To view suicidal behavior as the result of such a complex system is a good starting point to facilitate moving away from traditional linear thinking.

Military veterans are exposed to unique deployment stressors that can precipitate the onset of various psychological difficulties, including the perception that an important moral standard has been transgressed (i.e., potentially morally injurious events [PMIEs]) and the development of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms. Vulnerability to these outcomes may be related to individual differences in moral foundations, including those that function to protect the individual (i.e., individualizing) and those that function to protect the group (i.e., binding).