Your learning continues in 2021 with our Online International Childhood Trauma Symposium

Dr. Roby Abeles (USA)

Dr. Roby Abeles, is an accomplished integrative, somatic, neuro-psychotherapist, with over 35 years of experience in diverse clinical, academic, government, and human services environments in Australia and the USA.

She has studied and practiced trauma and addiction for the past 35 years. She co-developed the MATES Brain Regulation & Resource Program, is an international Brainspotting (BSP) trainer and Somatic Experiencing Practitioner.

She uses Brainspotting to stop addiction cravings, and to facilitate post trauma & addiction growth using Brainspotting with The Hero’s Journey work of Joseph Campbell. She has a PsyD in Clinical Psychology, Masters in Counselling & also in Spiritual Psychology and a BA Chemical Dependency Counselling.

Professor Judy Atkinson

Professor Judy Atkinson’s heritage derives from the Jiman people of the Upper Dawson in Central West Queensland, and the Bundjalung of Northern NSW. She has focused most of her community and academic life working in the field of violence, trauma and healing. At the professional level in this field she has followed the oral tradition through her presentations as an invited keynote speaker at numerous conferences, many of which have been published. Judy is currently on the committee for the NSW Child Death Review Team and the NSW Department of Community Services Research Committee. She is head of Gnibi – College of Indigenous Australian Peoples at Southern Cross University. In 2002 she was awarded her PhD from the Queensland University of Technology and holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Canberra in Professional Writing and Media studies

Dr Jon Baylin

Dr. Baylin received his doctorate in clinical psychology from Peabody College of Vanderbilt University in 1981. He has been working in the mental health field for 35 years. For the past fifteen years, while continuing his clinical practice, he has immersed himself in the study of neurobiology and in teaching mental health practitioners about the brain. He has given numerous workshops for mental health professionals on “Putting the Brain in Therapy.”

Several years ago, Dr. Baylin began a collaborative relationship with Daniel Hughes, a leader in the field of attachment-focused therapy. Their book, Brain Based Parenting, was released by Norton Press in the spring of 2012 as part of the Norton series on Interpersonal Neurobiology. Dr. Baylin has delivered keynote sessions at international conferences and has also given numerous workshops both internationally and regionally within the USA.

Professor Cindy Blackstock PhD

A member of the Gitxsan First Nation, Cindy is honoured to serve as the Executive Director of the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society and a professor at McGill University’s School of Social Work. She has over 30 years of experience working in child welfare and Indigenous children’s rights and has published more than 75 articles on topics relating to reconciliation, Indigenous theory, First Nations child welfare and human rights. Cindy was honoured to work with First Nations colleagues on a successful human rights challenge to Canada’s inequitable provision of child and family services and failure to implement Jordan’s Principle. This hard-fought litigation has resulted in hundreds of thousands of services being provided to First Nations children, youth and families.

She recently served on the Pan American Health Commission on Health Equity and Inequity and fundamentally believes that culturally-based equity is fundamental to meaningful reconciliation. Cindy is frequently sighted in the company of the Caring Society’s reconciliation Am-bear-rister, Spirit Bear, engaging children in meaningful actions to implement the TRC Calls to Action.

Bethany Brand Ph.D.

Bethany Brand, Ph.D. is a Psychology Professor at Towson University and she specializes in the assessment and treatment of trauma-related disorders She has over 30 years of clinical and research experience. Dr. Brand has been honored with numerous research, teaching and clinical awards and served on several national task forces that developed guidelines for the assessment and treatment of trauma-related disorders. Dr. Brand is the Principal Investigator on a series of international treatment studies of patients with dissociative disorders as well as studies that are developing methods for distinguishing dissociative disorders from other conditions including malingering. She has served as an expert witness on trauma in forensic cases at the state, federal, and international level.

Sue Carter

Sue Carter, Ph.D. is Distinguished University Scientist and Rudy Professor Emerita of Biology at Indiana University and Professor of Psychology at the University of Virginia. She has held Professorships at the University of Illinois at Chicago, the University of Maryland, College Park, and the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and between 2014 and 2019 was the Executive Director of the Kinsey Institute. A career biologist, Carter has studied the neuroendocrinology of love and social bonds for more than four decades. Dr. Carter’s research was integral to discovering the relationship between social behavior and oxytocin. Her current work in humans and other mammals examines the developmental and epigenetic consequences of oxytocin and the role of oxytocin pathways in selective sociality. She was the first person to detect and define the endocrinology of social bonds through her research on the socially monogamous, prairie vole. These findings helped lay the foundation for ongoing studies of behavioural and developmental effects of oxytocin and vasopressin, and identification of the many faceted role of oxytocin as “Nature’s Medicine.”

Dr. Marylene Cloitre (USA)

Marylene Cloitre, PhD, is Associate Director of Research in the National Center for PTSD Dissemination and Training Division, Palo Alto VA Health Care System. She is the Clinical Professor (Affiliate), Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University and Research Professor, Department of Psychiatry, NYU Langone Medical Center. Dr. Cloitre’s primary clinical and research interests are the developmental consequences and treatment of childhood abuse in adults and adolescents. She is the recipient of the Award for Outstanding Contributions to Practice in Trauma Psychologyfrom Division 56 of the American Psychological Association, is past president of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies, and was a member of the World Health Organization’s ICD-11 working group on trauma spectrum disorders. Her books include: Treating Survivors of Childhood Abuse and Grief in Childhood : Fundamentals of Treatment in Clinical Practice.

Christine A. Courtois PhD ABPP

Christine A. Courtois PhD, ABPP specializes in the treatment of trauma, particularly for adults experiencing the effects of childhood incest and other forms of sexual, physical, and emotional abuse. Dr. Courtois has worked with these issues for 30 years and has developed treatment approaches for complex posttraumatic and dissociative conditions for which she has received international recognition.
 
Dr. Courtois offers integrative and evidence-based relational treatments for clients and consultation for loved ones that involve respect, information, and hope to counter the effects of trauma and abuse. She offers individual and group treatments that use strategies and protocols, personalized to the clients’ needs. 
 
Dr. Courtois also offers educational, consulting and support services for 
professionals involved in treating trauma and complex posttraumatic and 
dissociative conditions. Seminars, training courses, and individual and group 
consultation services on numerous trauma-related topics are offered on-site as 
well as in other locations (nationally and internationally).

Dr. Lou Cozolino (USA)

“…Learning neuroscience takes dedication. It takes work to get beyond the cocktail level of conversation and clichés. It took me ten years to feel like I had any sense of what was going on and I studied it pretty intensively. So I think we all have to be careful, but even more importantly, just because you know some neuroscience doesn’t mean you know anything more than the therapist who doesn’t. It’s really about how you use that information to upgrade the quality of the work you’re doing….” Lou Cozolino, 2016, www.psychotherapy.net

Dr. Cozolino has been a writer practitioner for over 40 years. He has diverse clinical and research interests and holds degrees in philosophy, theology, and clinical psychology. His primary focus is the synthesis of neuroscience with psychotherapy, education, management, and leadership.

He is an American psychologist and professor of psychology at Pepperdine University. He holds degrees in philosophy from the State University of New York at Stony Brook, theology from Harvard University and a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from UCLA. He has conducted empirical research in schizophrenia, the long-term impact of stress, and child abuse. He is the author of eight books: The Pocket Guide to Neuroscience for Clinicians,The Neuroscience of Psychotherapy, The Social Neuroscience of Education, The Neuroscience of Human Relationships, The Healthy Aging Brain, Attachment-Based Teaching, The Making of a Therapist, and Why Therapy Works.

Dr. Cozolino lectures around the world on brain development, evolution, and psychotherapy and maintains and clinical and consulting practice in Los Angeles and New York. His entertaining style and practice wisdom made him a hit at the 2018 International Childhood Trauma Conference.

Kevin Creeden

Kevin Creeden, M.A., LMHC is the Director of Assessment and Research at the Whitney Academy in East Freetown, MA. . He has over 35 years of clinical experience treating children, adolescents, and their families working extensively with sexually and physically aggressive youth. Over the past 25 years, his primary focus has been on issues of trauma and attachment difficulties, especially with regard to the neurological impact of trauma on behavior. He has authored articles and book chapters on the neurodevelopmental impact of trauma on sexual behavior problems and sexual offending behavior. In the past, Mr. Creeden has been a Teaching Fellow at Boston College, and an Instructor in Psychology in the Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School at Cambridge Hospital. Presently, he is a guest faculty at the Simmons School of Social Work’s advanced training program for trauma-informed cared. Mr. Creeden trains and consults nationally and internationally to youth service, community, mental health, and forensic service programs.

Deb Dana

DEB DANA, LCSW, specializes in treating complex traumatic stress and lectures internationally on the ways Polyvagal Theory informs clinical interactions with trauma survivors. She is the coordinator of the traumatic stress research consortium in the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University and the developer of the Rhythm of Regulation clinical training series. Deb is the author of The Polyvagal Theory in Therapy (Norton, 2018) and co-editor with Stephen Porges, of Clinical Applications of the Polyvagal Theory (Norton, 2018).

Deb received her B.A. in social welfare and her M.S.W., both from the University of Southern Maine. She is trained in Internal Family Systems, Tapas Acupressure Technique, and Sensorimotor Psychotherapy. She completed the certificate program in traumatic stress studies at the Trauma Center.

Eliana Gil (USA)

Elian Gil is a Registered Play Therapist-Supervisor, Registered Art Therapist and Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist best known for her groundbreaking clinical work and research with children, teens and families impacted by trauma and abuse. As founder and senior clinical consultant of the Gil Institute for Trauma Recovery and Education in Fairfax, Virginia, she continues a lifelong commitment to therapy, training, consultation and education in the areas of play therapy, post-traumatic play, family therapy and relational treatments. Her most widely known book is The Healing Power of Play first published in 1991. Widely published in the areas of Play, Art and Family Therapy for both the professional and lay audience, Dr. Gil is best known for her research and writing on trauma. Her most recent book is Post-Traumatic Play: What Clinicians Should Know (2017, Guilford Press).

Dr. David Grand (USA)

Brain-based therapy is the fastest-growing area in the field of psychological health, because it has proven it can immediately address issues that talk therapy can take years to heal. Now, Dr. David Grand presents the next leap forward in psychological care, combining the strengths of brain-based, relational and talk therapies into a powerful technique he calls “Brainspotting.”

He is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker. His Brainspotting method and BioLateral Sound are now used by thousands of therapists on every continent seeking to break through the limitations of talk therapy. Dr. Grand is the author of Brainspotting: The Revolutionary New Therapy for Rapid and Effective Change and Emotional Healing at Warp Speed. In addition, he is the co-author of This Is Your Brain on Sports.

Dr. Grand’s clients include professional athletes, entertainers, business leaders and survivors of profound trauma (including 9/11, Katrina, Newtown and Iraq/Afghanistan combat veterans). They have all sought out his powerful method as a means to realize the kind of personal, professional and creative breakthroughs.

He was the clinical director of the Faithful Response program, which treated 9/11 survivors and returning vets from Iraq and Afghanistan. He has organized many pro bono trauma therapy trainings in places most in need, such as in Northern Ireland, Israel, Newtown, CT and inner cities of the United States. He has also treated thousands of survivors of the World Trade Center Attack, Hurricane Katrina and Newtown, CT.

Michael Graziano

Michael Steven Anthony Graziano is an American scientist and novelist who is currently a professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Princeton University. His scientific research focuses on the brain basis of awareness.

Graziano was born in Bridgeport Connecticut in 1967 and spent his childhood in Buffalo, New York. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Princeton University in 1989 in Psychology. He attended graduate school in neuroscience at MIT from 1989 to 1991 and then returned to Princeton University to complete his doctoral degree in 1996, in Neuroscience and Psychology. He remained at Princeton University as a postdoctoral researcher and then as a professor of neuroscience and psychology.

Graziano’s scientific research focuses on the brain basis of awareness. He has proposed the “attention schema” theory, an explanation of how, and for what adaptive advantage, brains attribute the property of awareness to themselves. His previous work focused on how the cerebral cortex monitors the space around the body and controls movement within that space. Notably he has suggested that the classical map of the body in motor cortex, the homunculus, is not correct and is better described as a map of complex actions that make up the behavioral repertoire. His publications on this topic have had a widespread impact among neuroscientists but have also generated controversy. He has written widely on neuroscience amongst other topics including:The Intelligent Movement Machine (2008); God, Soul, Mind, Brain (2010); Consciousness and the Social Brain (2013); The Spaces Between Us: A Story of Neuroscience, Evolution, and Human Nature (2018); and, Rethinking Consciousness: A Scientific Theory of Subjective Experience (2019).

Judith Herman

Judith Lewis Herman was born in 1942 in New York City. She attended Radcliffe College as an undergraduate, and she received her MD from Harvard University in 1968. She completed her residency in psychiatry at the Boston University Medical Center. She has been a professor of psychiatry at Harvard University since 1981, and she has worked as psychiatric director at the Women’s Mental Health Collective in Somerville Massachusetts since 1973.

Herman has spent the majority of her career addressing issues arising from posttraumatic stress and in particular, incest. On the topic of incest, Herman wrote Father-Daughter Incest in collaboration with Lisa Hirschman in 1981. Herman also wrote Trauma and Recovery in 1992. She has received awards for her work, including the American Medical Women’s Association award in 2000, and the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies Lifetime Achievement Award. In addition, the American Psychiatric Association bestowed the title of Distinguished Fellow upon Herman in 2003.

Judith Lewis Herman is a contemporary psychiatrist who studies trauma and posttraumatic stress (PTSD). She developed the diagnosis of Complex PTSD. 

Dr Dan Hughes

Dan Hughes is a clinical psychologist who resides in Lebanon, PA, with an office in nearby Annville. After receiving his Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from Ohio University he fairly quickly began specializing in the treatment of children and youth who had experienced abuse and neglect and for the most part now manifested serious psychological problems secondary to childhood trauma and attachment disorganization. Not having much success helping these children with traditional treatments, he developed an attachment-focused treatment that relied heavily on the theories and research of attachment and intersubjectivity to guide his model of treatment and parenting.

Dan resided for 30 years in Maine until moving to Lebanon. He is the author of three books including Building the Bonds of Attachment, 2nd edition, (2006), and Attachment-Focused Family Therapy (2007). He has provided training and consultations to therapists, social workers and parents throughout the US, Canada, UK, and Australia and provides regular training’s at Colby College in Maine, Annville, PA, and London, UK. He also is a visiting tutor for a graduate program in London.

Dan was born in Pittsburgh and has three daughters and one granddaughter.

Ruth Lanius

Ruth Lanius, MD, PhD, is Professor of Psychiatry and the director of the posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) research unit at the University of Western Ontario.

She established the Traumatic Stress Service and the Traumatic Stress Service Workplace Program, both services that specialize in the treatment and research of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and related comorbid disorders.

Ruth currently holds the Harris-Woodman Chair in Mind-Body Medicine at the Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry at the University of Western Ontario. Her research interests focus on studying the neurobiology of PTSD and treatment outcome research examining various pharmacological and psychotherapeutic methods.

Ruth has authored more than 100 published papers and chapters in the field of traumatic stress and is currently funded by several federal funding agencies. She regularly lectures on the topic of PTSD nationally and internationally. She has recently published a book Healing the traumatized self: consciousness, neuroscience, treatmentwith Paul Frewen which we talk about in the interview.

Dr Cathy Malchiodi (USA)

Cathy Malchiodi, PhD, LPCC, LPAT, ATR-BC, REAT holds a doctorate in psychology and is an expressive arts therapist specializing in the treatment of traumatic stress. For the last three decades Cathy has worked with traumatized children, adolescents, adults, and families, expanding the range of understanding of non-verbal, sensory-based concepts and methods. She is the executive director of the Trauma-Informed Practices and Expressive Arts Therapy Institute that has provided online and live training in expressive and somatosensory approaches to over 25,000 practitioners around the world.

Cathy is the 2022 Cecil and Eda Green Honors Chair on trauma and expressive arts and is an investigator in a 3.7-million-dollar, five-year grant with the US Department of Education, integrating expressive arts therapy into classrooms. A popular presenter and workshop leader, she given over 700 invited keynotes and workshops throughout the US, Canada, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and Australia. She has authored 20 books, including the bestselling Trauma and Expressive Arts Therapy: Brain, Body, and Imagination in the Healing Process and Understanding Children’s Drawings. Her publications have been translated in over 20 languages.

Dr. Malchiodi has extensive experience in the areas of trauma, attachment, disaster relief, and adversity. She has assisted more than 500 agencies, organizations, and institutions in developing trauma-informed, expressive, and responsive programming including the World Health Organization, United Nations, Department of Defense, Kennedy Center, Harvard, MIT, Johns Hopkins, and numerous universities, mental health, community, and healthcare agencies in the US and throughout the world. Widely interviewed by a variety of news outlets, she has been featured Time Magazine, CNN, Cosmopolitan, Natural Living, Marie Clare, Australia Childhood Foundation, US News and World Report, and VICE, among others. She is a contributing writer for Psychology Today and has a readership of approximately 5.8 million on topics relevant to trauma recovery and restoration of the self, arts in healthcare and mental health, and self-care.

Dr. Gabor Mate (Canada)

Dr Gabor Maté is a retired physician who, after 20 years of family practice and palliative care experience, worked for over a decade in Vancouver’s Downtown East Side with patients challenged by drug addiction and mental illness. The bestselling author of four books published in twenty-five languages, Gabor is an internationally renowned speaker highly sought after for his expertise on addiction, trauma, childhood development, and the relationship of stress and illness.

His book on addiction received the Hubert Evans Prize for literary non-fiction. For his groundbreaking medical work and writing he has been awarded the Order of Canada, his country’s highest civilian distinction, and the Civic Merit Award from his hometown, Vancouver. His books include In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters With Addiction; When the Body Says No; The Cost of Hidden Stress; Scattered Minds: The Origins and Healing of Attention Deficit Disorder; and (with Gordon Neufeld) Hold on to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers.

Dr Stephen Porges

Stephen W. Porges, Ph.D. is Distinguished University Scientist at Indiana University where he is the founding director of the Traumatic Stress Research Consortium. He is Professor of Psychiatry at the University of North Carolina, and Professor Emeritus at both the University of Illinois at Chicago and the University of Maryland. He served as president of the Society for Psychophysiological Research and the Federation of Associations in Behavioral & Brain Sciences and is a former recipient of a National Institute of Mental Health Research Scientist Development Award. He has published more than 400 peer-reviewed papers across several disciplines including anesthesiology, biomedical engineering, critical care medicine, ergonomics, exercise physiology, gerontology, neurology, neuroscience, obstetrics, pediatrics, psychiatry, psychology, psychometrics, space medicine, and substance abuse. In 1994 he proposed the Polyvagal Theory, a theory that links the evolution of the mammalian autonomic nervous system to social behavior and emphasises the importance of physiological state in the expression of behavioral problems and psychiatric disorders. The theory is leading to innovative treatments based on insights into the mechanisms mediating symptoms observed in several behavioral, psychiatric, and physical disorders.

Dr. Allan Schore (USA)

Dr. Allan Schore is on the clinical faculty of the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences and UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine. He is author of six seminal volumes, Affect Regulation and the Origin of the Self, Affect Dysregulation and Disorders of the Self, Affect Regulation and the Repair of the Self, The Science of the Art of Psychotherapy, Right Brain Psychotherapy, and The Development of the Unconscious Mind as well as numerous articles and chapters. His Regulation Theory, grounded in developmental neuroscience and developmental psychoanalysis, focuses on the origin, psychopathogenesis, and psychotherapeutic treatment of the early forming subjective implicit self.

His contributions appear in multiple disciplines, including developmental neuroscience, psychiatry, psychoanalysis, developmental psychology, attachment theory, trauma studies, behavioral biology, clinical psychology, and clinical social work. His groundbreaking integration of neuroscience with attachment theory has led to his description as “the American Bowlby,” with emotional development as “the world’s leading authority on how our right hemisphere regulates emotion and processes our sense of self,” and with psychoanalysis as “the world’s leading expert in neuropsychoanalysis.” 

He has founded the Right Brain Psychotherapy Institute which offers online master class videos with Dr. Schore to foster a deeper understanding of the fundamental psychobiological change mechanisms of all forms of individual, psychodynamic, couples, body-oriented, and group psychotherapy. The American Psychoanalytic Association has described Dr. Schore as “a monumental figure in psychoanalytic and neuropsychoanalytic studies.”

Dr Dan Siegel

Dr. Siegel is a clinical professor of psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine and the founding co-director of the Mindful Awareness Research Center at UCLA. An award-winning educator, he is a Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and recipient of several honorary fellowships. Dr. Siegel is also the Executive Director of the Mindsight Institute, an educational organization, which offers online learning and in-person seminars that focus on how the development of mindsight in individuals, families and communities can be enhanced by examining the interface of human relationships and basic biological processes. His psychotherapy practice includes children, adolescents, adults, couples, and families.
 
He serves as the Medical Director of the LifeSpan Learning Institute and on the Advisory Board of the Blue School in New York City, which has built its curriculum around Dr. Siegel’s Mindsight approach.
 
Dr. Siegel has published extensively for the professional audience.  He is the author of numerous articles, chapters, and the internationally acclaimed text, The Developing Mind: How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are (2nd. Ed., Guilford, 2012).  This book introduces the field of interpersonal neurobiology, and has been utilized by a number of clinical and research organizations worldwide. Dr. Siegel serves as the Founding Editor for the Norton Professional Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology which contains nearly seventy textbooks.  The Mindful Brain: Reflection and Attunement in the Cultivation of Well-Being (Norton, 2007) explores the nature of mindful awareness as a process that harnesses the social circuitry of the brain as it promotes mental, physical, and relational health. The Mindful Therapist: A Clinician’s Guide to Mindsight and Neural Integration (Norton, 2010), explores the application of focusing techniques for the clinician’s own development, as well as their clients’ development of mindsight and neural integration. Pocket Guide to Interpersonal Neurobiology: An Integrative Handbook of the Mind (Norton, 2012), explores how to apply the interpersonal neurobiology approach to developing a healthy mind, an integrated brain, and empathic relationships. The New York Times bestseller Mind: A Journey to the Heart of Being Human (Norton, 2016) offers a deep exploration of our mental lives as they emerge from the body and our relations to each other and the world around us. His New York Times bestseller Aware: The Science and Practice of Presence (Tarcher/Perigee, 2018) provides practical instruction for mastering the Wheel of Awareness, a life-changing tool for cultivating more focus, presence, and peace in one’s day-to-day life. Dr. Siegel’s publications for professionals and the public have been translated into over 40 forty languages.

Dr. Siegel’s book, Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation (Bantam, 2010), offers the general reader an in-depth exploration of the power of the mind to integrate the brain and promote well-being. He has written five parenting books, including the three New York Times bestsellers Brainstorm: The Power and Purpose of the Teenage Brain (Tarcher/Penguin, 2014); The Whole-Brain Child: 12 Revolutionary Strategies to Nurture Your Child’s Developing Mind (Random House, 2011) and No-Drama Discipline: The Whole-Brain Way to Calm the Chaos and Nurture Your Child’s Developing Mind (Bantam, 2014), both with Tina Payne Bryson, Ph.D., The Yes Brain: How to Cultivate Courage, Curiosity, and Resilience in Your Child (Bantam, 2018) also with Tina Payne Bryson, Ph.D., and Parenting from the Inside Out: How a Deeper Self-Understanding Can Help You Raise Children Who Thrive (Tarcher/Penguin, 2003) with Mary Hartzell, M.Ed.
 
Dr. Siegel’s unique ability to make complicated scientific concepts exciting and accessible has led him to be invited to address diverse local, national and international groups including mental health professionals, neuroscientists, corporate leaders, educators, parents, public administrators, healthcare providers, policy-makers, mediators, judges, and clergy. He has lectured for the King of Thailand, Pope John Paul II, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Google University, and London’s Royal Society of Arts (RSA).

Ed Tronick

Edward Z. Tronick is a world class researcher and teacher recognized internationally for his work on the neurobehavioral and social emotional development of infants and young children, parenting in the U.S. and other cultures, and infant-parent mental health. Over the course of his career, Dr. Tronick has co-authored and authored more than 150 scientific papers and chapters.

Dr. Tronick developed the Still-face paradigm, which has become a standard experimental paradigm for studying social emotional development in the fields of pediatrics, psychiatry, clinical and child psychology, and nursing. In his studies using the still-face he revolutionized our understanding of the emotional capacities and coping of infants and the effects of factors such as maternal anxiety and depression on infant social emotional development.

Dr. Tronick has carried out research in Zaire, Peru, and India on child rearing and development. In Zaire, in his study the Efe foragers, he discovered the most extensive naturally occurring system of multiple caretaking for foragers yet described. In his research on neurodevelopment he has demonstrated the derailing effects of in utero cocaine and heroine exposure and the effects of obstetric medication on infant, the parent and their relationship. His studies of very low birthweight infants with white matter disorder have found key modules of behavior that are disturbed by the lesion. Recently, he and Barry Lester published the NICU Network Neurobehavioral Assessment, a standardized instrument for assessing the neurobehavioral status of the newborn.

The goals Dr. Tronick’s research are to understand the nature of the process of normal and abnormal developmental processed which are embedded in the moment by moment emotional and social exchanges of infants and young children and their caregivers. Further to determine the factors from malnutrition to drug exposure to parenting to affective disorders that disrupt and derail the normal developmental process. And, to develop ways to prevent and repair developmental derailment.

The research has already produced several critical translational pieces of work. The NICU Network Neurobehavioral Scale has been used to identify infants who are suffering from neurobehavioral abnormalities. The Still-face paradigm has begun to be used to identify infants whose emotional and coping capacities are compromised and to identify relational disorders in infants and parents. The multiple caretaking system found among the Efe has had implications for the caring for infants in groups. As a whole the research in part has led to the development of the Touchpoints program of intervention developed by Brazelton, and to the Infant-Parent Mental Health Program for training professionals from pediatrics, PT, OT, social work, psychiatry to work with the mental health disorders of infants, children and parents and the relational disorders of children and parents.

Dr. Tronick received his PhD from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and completed post graduate training at Harvard University. He has served on NIMH, NICHD, NIDA and NSF review panels and on the equivalent review panels for the British, Canadian, Australian, Swiss and New Zealand governments. He has been a reviewer for the McArthur Foundation and has received grants from NIMH, NICHD, NIDA and NSF and from Genzyme and Merck. Dr. Tronick has consulted for WIC and for the WHO and UNICEF. He is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association. He is also the recipient of an Award for Excellence from the Boston Institute for the Development of Parents and Infants. The Napa Infant-Parent Mental Health Program, co-founded and directed by Dr. Kristie Brandt, won the National Association of Counties Best Program for Kids Award for the Napa Infant-Mental Health Program.

Bessel van der Kolk (MD)

Bessel van der Kolk MD spends his career studying how children and adults adapt to traumatic experiences, and has translated emerging findings from neuroscience and attachment research to develop and study a range of treatments for traumatic stress in children and adults. Hi book – The Body Keeps The Score: Mind, Brain and Body in the Transformation of Trauma – is transformational to the field.

In 1984, he set up one of the first clinical/research centers in the US dedicated to study and treatment of traumatic stress in civilian populations, which has trained numerous researchers and clinicians specializing in the study and treatment of traumatic stress, and which has been continually funded to research the impact of traumatic stress and effective treatment interventions. He did the first studies on the effects of SSRIs on PTSD; was a member of the first neuroimaging team to investigate how trauma changes brain processes, and did the first research linking BPD and deliberate self-injury to trauma and neglect in early childhood.

Much of his research has focused on how trauma has a different impact at different stages of development, and that disruptions in care-giving systems have additional deleterious effects that need to be addressed for effective intervention. In order to promote a deeper understanding of the impact of childhood trauma and to foster the development and execution of effective treatment interventions, he initiated the process that led to the establishment of the National Child Traumatic Stress Network (NCTSN), a Congressionally mandated initiative that now funds approximately 150 centers specializing in developing effective treatment interventions, and implementing them in a wide array of settings, from juvenile detention centers to tribal agencies, nationwide.

He has focused on studying treatments that stabilize physiology, increase executive functioning and help traumatized individuals to feel fully alert to the present. This has included an NIMH funded study on EMDR and NCCAM funded study of yoga, and, in recent years, the study of neurofeedback to investigate whether attentional and perceptual systems (and the neural tracks responsible for them) can be altered by changing EEG patterns.

​His efforts resulted in the establishment of Trauma Center (now the Trauma Research Foundation) that consisted of a well-trained clinical team specializing in the treatment of children and adults with histories of child maltreatment, that applied treatment models that are widely taught and implemented nationwide, a research lab that studied the effects of neurofeedback and MDMA on behavior, mood, and executive functioning, and numerous trainings nationwide to a variety of mental health professional, educators, parent groups, policy makers, and law enforcement personnel.