Richard F. Mollica, M.D., M.A.R. is the Director of the Harvard Program in Refugee Trauma (HPRT) of Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. He received his medical degree from the University of New Mexico and completed his Psychiatry residency at Yale Medical School. While at Yale he also trained in epidemiology and received a philosophy degree from the Divinity School. In 1981, Dr. Mollica co-founded the Indochinese Psychiatry Clinic (IPC). Over the past two decades HPRT and IPC have pioneered the mental health care of survivors of mass violence and torture. HPRT/IPC's clinical model has been replicated throughout the world.
Dr. Mollica has received numerous awards for his work and is the author of the newly published book Healing Invisible Wounds: Paths to Hope and Recovery in a Violent World. In 1993, he received the human rights award from the American Psychiatric Association. In 1996, the American Orthopsychiatry Association presented him with the Max Hymen Award. In 2000 he was awarded a visiting professorship to Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan, for his contributions during the Kobe earthquake. In 2001 he was selected as a Fulbright New Century scholar. Under Dr. Mollica's direction, HPRT conducts training, policy and research activities for traumatized populations around the world. HPRT's screening instruments are considered a gold standard in the field and have been widely translated into over thirty languages. HPRT's scientific work has helped place mental health issues at the center of the recovery of post-conflict societies.
Dr. Mollica has published over 160 scientific articles. He and his team over the past 30 years have cared for over 10,000 survivors of extreme violence worldwide. Through his research, clinical work and trainings he is recognized as a leader in the treatment and rehabilitation of traumatized people and their communities.
James Lavelle, LICSW, is the Director of International Programs and Community Organizing for the Harvard Program in Refugee Trauma (HPRT). As Co-Founder of HPRT, he has spent the past 30 years working as a clinician, educator, researcher, and community organizer helping to pioneer the field of refugee mental health. With his HPRT colleagues and their in-country partners, James participated in innovative trainings of primary-care physicians and mental health professionals and paraprofessionals in Thailand, Cambodia, Croatia and Bosnia. He has also worked with his HPRT team in conducting major epidemiological research in these societies.
James also co-founded the world famous Indochinese Psychiatry Clinic(IPC) in Boston in 1981 with Dr. Richard Mollica after starting his career in 1978 as Director of the Indochinese Refugee Mental Health Program sponsored by a group called Research for Social Change Inc. IPC has morphed since the year 2000 into a new and improved clinical service for individuals and families entitled “A Statewide Network of Local Care for Survivors of Torture,” based at Lynn Community Health Center (funded by the Federal Office of Refugee Resettlement). He advises “Always be a clinician.”
James is currently active in a training consultation in Peru with HPRT’s collaborating center, the University of San Marcos Medical School. He is a member of the international faculty of the “Mastery in Global Mental Health: Trauma and Recovery Certificate Program.” This program incorporates lecture-based training held in the cities of Porano and Orvieto, Italy followed by five months of continued learning on the Internet, aimed at developing a “Community of Practice” of faculty and trainees. This unique training is the major vehicle for the dissemination of the Mental Health Action Plan and Book of Best Practices generated through HPRT’s policy initiative: Project 1 Billion.
James Lavelle, LICSW, has conducted hundreds of trainings and workshops and has co-authored scores of publications. With a little help from his HPRT friends, he has had the honor of offering clinical care to over 10,000 survivors of war, torture and violence. He remains pathologically optimistic due to the fact that he thoroughly enjoys working toward world peace with the “Best and the Brightest” over the past three decades. He cautions however: “We’ve met a lot of zany people along the way.”
Svang Tor is a Senior Clinician and Consultant/Liaison for HPRT. She has over twenty years of experience in the field of refugee mental health. Ms. Tor, a survivor of the Khmer Rouge killing fields, began working as a Senior Mental Health Specialist for the Indochinese Psychiatry Clinic in 1987. Between 1994 and 1999, she developed the curriculum for and helped to implement training projects in Siem Reap, Cambodia, and on the Thai-Cambodian border. The purpose was to train primary care physicians and counselors as mental health providers, and teach them how to train other doctors.
Working with Dr. Mollica with the assistance of Radcliffe's Schlesinger Library, Ms. Tor recruited, interviewed and transcribed the oral histories of ten Cambodian-American women and a group of Cambodian-American teenagers for HPRT's "Courage and Resiliency" project. She also co-directs the HPRT shadow puppet project, and is collaborating on the production of a Cambodian comic book. Ms. Tor has received several awards for her work, including the Unsung Heroes Award from the Healthy Boston Coalition, a Certificate of Recognition from Boston Mayor Thomas Menino, and a Research Recognition Award from the Society for Family Therapy and Research. Currently she is overseeing HPRT's "Statewide Network of Local Care to Survivors of Torture" (IPC+) project in the Cambodian communities of Lynn and Lowell.
Paula A. Madrid, MA, Psy.D. is a New York State Licensed Clinical Psychologist. She is a fellow at HPRT and adjunct faculty at the National Center for Disaster Preparedness (NCDP) of Columbia University, where she served as the director for the Division of Psychosocial Preparedness from 2005 until June of 2009. Dr. Madrid also served as an Associate Research Scientist at the NCDP for three years.
Dr. Madrid also founded and headed The Resiliency Program, under the umbrella of the NCDP. This was a clinic focused on providing direct care and staff training to individuals impacted by the terrorist events of September 11, 2001. The Resiliency Program served over ten-thousand individuals in its six years of existence.
In October of 2005, Dr. Madrid was appointed the Director of Mental Health Services for “Operation Assist,” a joint initiative by the Children’s Health Fund and Columbia’s NCDP to assist victims of Hurricane Katrina. She led a mental health initiative involving the development of three mental health programs that are still in existence in Biloxi (MS), New Orleans, and Baton Rouge (LA). Dr. Madrid and her team conducted a series of training programs for medical and mental health professionals in conjunction with the Adolescent School Health Program, Office of Public Health of Louisiana. This resulted in the training of over 3000 professionals in four major cities of Louisiana over a two year period. As a result of this work, Dr. Madrid was appointed the Senior Director of Mental Health Programs at the Children's Health Fund and was charged with assisting in the integration of medical and mental health programs throughout their network of over 20 projects nation-wide, a position she held until December of 2008.
Dr. Madrid has consulted to and participated clinically in post-tsunami relief work, training nurses and providing assessment of children in the Port Blair, Andaman Islands, India as part of her work with Sangha, a non-profit dedicated to the medical and mental health of children in that part of the world. Dr. Madrid consulted to professional organizations in Spain after the Madrid train bombings in 2004 order to provide support to mental health professionals.
Dr. Madrid has published numerous articles and presents nationally and internationally on the impact of underserved populations in disasters, resilience as an essential aspect of disaster preparedness, and developing psychosocial and training programs post-disaster.
Kathia Kirschner is originally from Sao Paulo, Brazil. She has received her Bachelor of Science degree in Human Development with a concentration in Inequality from Cornell University in May, 2008. She spent 6 months in Bamako, Mali, doing field research on the psychological effects of colonization and later completed an Honors Thesis on identity reconstruction as a result of acculturation in the United States. She has always been interested in the field of psychological trauma and issues related to immigration, which has led her to work with immigrants in New York City and do volunteer work around the world. Kathia has been working as a research assistant at the Harvard Program in Refugee Trauma since July, 2008.
Sam Catherine Johnston, B.Arts, McGill University 1999, Ed. M. Harvard Graduate School of Education, 2004, Ed. D, 2009 Harvard Graduate School of Education.
Sam's research is focused on the use of the community of practice for peer-based learning. Sam specializes in the use of new media and technology to foster peer-based learning. Since 2005, Sam has worked as an educational consultant to the Harvard Program in Refugee Trauma working on the design,delivery, and evaluation of the HPRT Mastery Certificate in Global Mental Health: Trauma and Recovery. Her doctoral thesis was an evaluation of the learning outcomes for students in the GMH Program based on their level of engagement in the community of practice, the learning paradigm chosen for the GMH Program. Sam is also a senior associate and distance educator at the Center for Social Innovation where she works on professional development for homelessness services providers. Sam has taught adult literacy, English as a Foreign Language and worked as a teaching fellow for graduate courses at the Harvard Graduate School of Education that focus on the use of new media in education. She has worked as a consultant in education facilities and resource planning in Canada and abroad.
Harry Schnur is originally from Shaker Heights, Ohio. In May 2008 he graduated from Bowdoin College with a BA in religion. Thanks to a Bowdoin grant, he spent the summer of 2007 volunteering at a maternal and child health organization called Neary Khmer in Cambodia. This experience encouraged him to continue studying the Khmer language and become involved with the local Khmer community in Portland, Maine. He wrote his senior thesis on the interaction between a rural Maine community and a Khmer Buddhist group as the latter applied for a zoning permit. Harry's persistent interest in public health, social capital and cross-cultural care has led him to work at Lynn Community Health Center as a community health worker. He has worked under supervision of HPRT since August 2008.
GLOBAL MENTAL HEALTH: TRAUMA AND RECOVERY CERTIFICATE PROGRAM
FACULTY 2009- 2010
Eugene F. Augusterfer, LCSW, is the founder and director of Creative Strategies International, LLC, a mental health consulting firm specializing in program development clinical mental health with an emphasis on trauma care and telemedicine. He has been actively involved in clinical mental health, research and teaching for 20+ years, providing clinical care in various settings including inpatient care, outpatient care and emergency settings. In addition to his affiliation with the HPRT, he is affiliated with the Vanderbilt University National Center for Emergency Preparedness, the Georgetown University Medical School – McLean Psychiatric Study Group (founding member,) the World Bank Global Mental Health Working Group (founding member,) the World Economic Forum, Geneva, Switzerland (forum partner) and the U.S. Air Force Telemedicine Program. In the U.S., he has been involved in numerous mental health programs, including the National Institute of Mental Health, the State Department and other agencies. Internationally, he has been involved in mental health programs in Mongolia, Russia, Ukraine and Kenya.
Heidi Kerko, J.D. , is the Executive Director of the ngo, Psychological Aid and Advocacy for Children of Trauma (PAACT) whose goal is to provide psychological services to children suffering from severe trauma, to advocate on their behalf, and to raise awareness about PTSD and other psychological manifestations of severe trauma. Heidi has been working at the intersection of the fields of law and mental health since 1999. She has worked extensively with children in the dependency system (Child Dependency Unit of County Counsel), men and women sentenced to death during their post-conviction habeas proceedings (Habeas Corpus Resource Center), and survivors of torture (Survivors International). Her research, publication and teaching interests explore the relationship between marginalized and displaced populations and their ability to access various systems of justice using international human rights law and domestic remedies. She is married and has a daughter and twin boys.
Roger C. Mannell, PhD , is Dean of Applied Health Sciences at the University of Waterloo where he and his colleagues are concerned with health promotion and illness and injury prevention. As a psychologist and professor of health and leisure sciences, he studies determinants of lifestyle choices and quality of life. Roger has also had a long-standing interest in the role of play and humor in people’s lives and regularly teaches a course on play, creativity and child development. Recent research funded by the Canadian Population Health Initiative and the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada is concerned with the relationships among the work, leisure and family domains of life and capacity for coping with negative life events such as bereavement, the challenges of care giving and time pressure. Roger also consults with organizations on the effectiveness of their employee assistance programs. He has published over 120 research articles and book chapters and is co-author of the book “A Social Psychology of Leisure,” which has been translated into Japanese and Chinese. He is the recipient of the University of Illinois Allen V. Sapora Research Award and the U.S. National Parks and Recreation Association's Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt Research Excellence Award.
Peter Polatin, MD, MPH, is a Health Program Manager for the International Department of the Rehabilitation and Research Centre for Torture Victims in Copenhagen. He is a psychiatrist with prior specialization in community and disaster mental health, pain management, clinical outcomes research, and addictionology. In his current position, he works with partner NGOs to construct, implement, and evaluate psychosocial and medical interventions to assist in the identification, assessment, and treatment of survivors of torture in the developing world. He has authored, co-authored, or edited over 60 chapters and peer review articles and one book. Prior to his current position he was an Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Anesthesiology and Pain Management at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, and disaster mental health consultant to Dallas County.
Dr. Ed K. S. Wang Dr. Ed K.S. Wang is a member of the National Experts on Cultural Competence of the National Technical Assistance Center for State Mental Health Planning and a consultant of the National Center for Cultural Competence. Since 2000, he has been a faculty of the Training Institute & Policy Academy of the National Technical Assistance Center for Children's Mental Health at the Georgetown University Child Development Center. As a clinical instructor of the Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, his teaching focus is on clinical competence in working with culturally diverse clients. He is a board member of the National Asian American Pacific Islander Mental Health Association, and a member of the National Advisory Council, Substance Abuse Mental Health Services Administration, Department of Health and Human Services. Dr. Wang is the Director of Multicultural Affairs, Massachusetts Department of Mental Health. He received a number of State Senate and House of Representatives Official Citations for his public service and the Commonwealth’s Citation for Outstanding Performance in the creation and leadership of the Cultural Competence Action Team.
Solvig Ekblad, Licensed psychologist, PhD at KI (1986), associate professor in transcultural psychology (1992) at KI and research group leader, Migration and Health at the Stress Research Institute, Stockholm University. Her present research projects are performed in close collaboration between the Stress Research Institute, Stockholm university, Stockholm County Council and Karolinska Institutet. Her activities include applied research in addition to education and training, consulting, documentation and information. She is involved in the KIRT-programme (supervision of foreign PhD students). Between 1997-2002 she co-chaired (prof Derrick Silove) the International Committee on Refugees and Other Migrants, of the World Federation for Mental Health and were consultants for UNHCR From 2005 and onwards she is a member of KI:s ethical council. She is one of the core faculty in a Master Course in Global Mental Health. She is a member of the Scientific Council at the Rehabilitation and Research Center for Torture Victims (RCT), Copenhagen, Denmark. She collaborates with two foreign adjunct professors at Karolinska Institutet, prof Richard Mollica, USA and prof Derrick Silove, Australia.
Robert Brooks, PhD, is Senior Research Officer, Centre for Population Mental Health, and Senior Lecturer School of Psychiatry University of New South Wales: A history of psychology work in child protection, and mental health, applied and academic work. Overall the focus of my work is in research methods (quantitative and qualitative) and statistics. The broad content areas include trauma anger and violence, and working with Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples on creating safer communities.
Franco Paparo, MD, trained in Neurology and psychiatry and was assistant Professor at University of Rome La Sapienza. He has been for many years a full member of the Group-analytic Society (London) and training group-analyst in Rome. He is associated member of the International Psychoanalytic Society. He was a pioneer in the psychiatric reform in Italy as Director of Unit 17 for severely disturbed patients. In 1980 he met Heinz Kohot and introduced self-psychology in Italy through his numerous translations and lectures: He is member of the International Council of Psychoanalytic Self-psychology and co-founder in Italy of the new school of self-psychology and relational analysis Isipse. He has also served as a senior consultant to HPRT since its origins in 1981.
Giovanni Muscettola, MD, is Chairman of the Department of Neuroscience at the University Medical School of Napoli Federico II in Napoli, Italy. Dr. Muscettola has been a full professor of psychiatry at the University Medical School in Napoli since 1996. Additionally, he is the author of more than 100 publications in the fields of biological psychiatry and psychopharmacology.
Massimo Ammaniti, MD, a child psychiatrist & psychoanalyst, currently serves as a professor of
Developmental Psychopathology and chairman of the Faculty of Infant and
Adolescent Clinical Psychology at University La Sapienza, in Rome, Italy. Additionally, he serves as a member of the Board of Directors of the World Association of Infant Mental Health. He is a major advisor to the Italian Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Giampaolo Nicolais, PhD, Clinical psychologist, is Associate Professor of Developmental Psychology, Sapienza University, Rome.
He received his B.A. in Psychology from the University of Rome “La Sapienza”, where he also completed his postgraduate education with a Psy.D. training in child, adolescent and adult clinical psychology and psychotherapy, and a Ph.D. in clinical child psychology.
He’s been practicing for a decade as psychologist and psychotherapist in the areas of developmental psychopathology and child abuse and neglect.
His main research interests are in the field of developmental psychopathology, attachment, child trauma and its intergenerational transmission.
Natale Losi,PhD, family psychotherapist, medical anthropologist and sociologist, has extensive professional experience in various countries, having worked in Africa (Mali and Ethiopia); in the Balkans (Bosnia, Albania, Kosovo, Serbia); Switzerland (Mâitre d’Enseignement et Recherche at the University of Geneva); Italy, in Milan and in Perugia as professor at the university. He is presently the Head of the Psychosocial and Cultural Integration Unit at the International Organization for Migration. Through his clinical and academic experience he has developed the ethno-systemic-narrative approach that includes memory and narration, especially within migrant communities, as a fundamental tool of cultural integration and resilience. Such ideas are discussed in his recent titles that include: Lives Elsewhere, Migration and Psychic Malaise. Karnac, London, 2006; Archives of Memory, supporting traumatized communities through narration and remembrance, (Ed), IOM, Geneva, 2001.
Maria Bosio, is a free-lance journalist and filmmaker with over 25 years of experience in directing and screenwriting for documentaries, fiction film and advertisement. She has worked free-lance for RAI-TV (Rai Radiotelevisione Italiana), Mediaset (Canale 5) and Radio1 RAI, directing and writing over 50 programs on political, social and cultural topics. She had worked with HPRT in 2004-2005 on the film entitled “Sowing Seeds that Heal the Sorrow.”
Susan Meffert, M.D., M.P.H. is an Assistant Clinical Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). She is a recipient of the UCSF Global Health Faculty Burke Award, delivered through UCSF Global Health Sciences (GHS) and works closely with GHS in the development of a Program on Violence and Trauma and global health education.
Dr. Meffert has been working in the field of global health since 1998, as a student, clinician and researcher. She conducts Randomized Controlled Clinical Trials (RCTs) to develop of local standards of mental health care for populations recovering from intrastate conflict or natural disaster. Central to her work is the use of ethnographically informed needs assessments, carefully adapted measures of mental health and intervention efficacy, and delivery of mental health care by local personnel. She has worked with populations in Haiti, Russia, Nepal, India, the Middle East, Africa and China. One of her areas of concentration is East Africa, having spent 10 years in clinical care and/or research with the Sudanese population.
Dr. Meffert is trained in Forensic Psychiatry and has expertise in the intersection between mental health and law. Her forensic focus concerns the mental health of asylum seekers/refugees, vicarious trauma among human rights attorneys and mental health aspects of transitional justice. She teaches on these topics in the University of California Berkeley Boalt School of Law International Human Rights Clinic and as part of a UCSF-University of California Hastings College of Law collaboration for conducting asylum-seeker evaluations.
The Reverend Frederick J. Streets was appointed Chaplain of Yale University and Senior Pastor of the Church of Christ in Yale (UCC) in 1992. A native of Chicago, Illinois, Jerry (the nickname he prefers to be called) is the first African Amerian and Baptist to hold this position. He is also a member of the faculty at the Yale Divinity School and of the clinical social work faculty at the Yale Child Study Center. His research, publication, teaching and lecture interests are in pastoral theology, institutional leadership and development, and religion and social welfare. He holds the Master of Divinity degree from Yale University and masters and doctoral degrees from Wurzweiler School of Social Work, Yeshiva University, New York. Prior to becoming the University Chaplain at Yale, Jerry was the Pastor of the Mount Aery Baptist Church in Bridgeport, Connecticut from 1975-1992.
Reverend Streets is a senior consultant with the Harvard University Program in Refugee Trauma. In Bosnia, he has worked with refugees, physicians, religious and civic leaders, and members of the social work faculty at the University of Sarajevo in dealing with that region's post-war spiritual and psychosocial needs. He was a member of a delegation sponsored by the CT Conference of the United Church of Christ and the Mennonite Church that recently visited with religious and civil leaders in Columbia, South America. He joined over 100 scholars and professionals of non-profit and non-governmental organizations convened in Buenos Aires, Argentina this past October to promote greater understanding of the non-profit sectors relationship to higher education and peace making in the western hemisphere.
