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Leadership LeadershipComprehensive information about the National Center Divisions is available in About Us.
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Dr. Friedman is Executive Director of the U. S. Department of Veterans Affairs National Center for PTSD and Professor of Psychiatry and of Pharmacology at Dartmouth Medical School. He has worked with PTSD patients as a clinician and researcher for thirty years and has published extensively on stress and PTSD, biological psychiatry, psychopharmacology, and clinical outcome studies on depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, and chemical dependency. He has written or co-edited nearly 200 books, chapters and peer reviewed articles in scientific journals. Listed in The Best Doctors in America, he is a Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, past-president of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies (ISTSS), Chair of the scientific advisory board of the Anxiety Disorders Association of America and has served on many VA and NIMH research, education and policy committees. He has received many honors including the ISTSS Lifetime Achievement Award in 1999.
Dr. Schnurr is responsible for program development, consultation on research projects, and strategic direction of the activities at the seven sites that make up the Center. She is a Research Professor of Psychiatry at Dartmouth Medical School and her research focuses on substantive questions as well as methodological and statistical issues. More recently she has focused on randomized clinical trials. She served as President of the ISTSS in 2004 and as a member of the ISTSS Board from 2000-2005. She is the current Editor of the Journal of Traumatic Stress and CTU-Online. As a leading researcher in the field of traumatic stress, her work focuses on PTSD treatment, the physical health effects of exposure to trauma, older veterans, and the etiology of PTSD.
Dr. Keane is a professor and vice-chair of the Department of Psychiatry at Boston University School of Medicine, and is also recognized as a world leader in the field of traumatic stress. He developed many of the most widely used PTSD assessment measures and is considered an authority on the cognitive behavioral treatment of PTSD. Dr. Keane has participated in many scientific review panels and was co-chair of the National Institute of Mental Health Consensus Conference that established national standards for the diagnosis and assessment of PTSD. His research has been continuously funded for 27 years and he's published nearly 200 books, papers, and chapters. He is a past president of ISTSS and a fellow of the American Psychological Association and the American Psychological Society, and he has received many awards, including a Fulbright Scholarship, Binghamton University's Weisband Distinguished Alumnus Award, the Association for Advancement of Behavior Therapy's Outstanding Researcher Award, the Robert J. Laufer Outstanding Scientific Achievement Award (1997) and the Lifetime Achievement Award (2004) from the ISTSS.
Dr. Krystal is the Robert L. McNeil, Jr. Professor of Clinical Pharmacology and Deputy Chairman for Research for the Department of Psychiatry at the Yale University School of Medicine, and is one of the nation's leading investigators on the neurobiology and psychopharmacology of PTSD. Dr. Krystal has published over 300 publications and currently serves as Editor of Biological Psychiatry. He has also served on many national advisory committees, including a
DoD-VA
collaborative research program initiative on stress, PTSD, and other illnesses related to the 1991 Gulf War; the National Institute of Health's Director's Advisory Group on Young Investigators; and the NIMH Board of Scientific Counselors, which he has chaired since 2004. He currently is a member of the Board of Directors of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ACNP), Research Society on Alcoholism (RSA), and the Society of Biological Psychiatry (ex-officio). His work has been honored by numerous awards, including the ISTSS Presidents Award and the ISTSS Danieli Award, both for PTSD research contributions. Currently he also serves as Director of the Alcohol Research Center funded by the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Dr. Desai received both her MPH in chronic disease epidemiology, and her PhD in mental health services research and psychiatric epidemiology, from Yale University. Dr. Desai serves as Associate Director of the Northeast Program Evaluation Center, the evaluation arm of mental health services for the VA, is the head of the Women and Trauma Core of Women's Health at Yale, and is Associate Director of the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program at Yale. Dr. Desai's research utilizes principles of psychiatric epidemiology and services research to examine risk factors and correlates of several psychiatric disorders, with particular attention paid to co-occurring disorders. This research has included studies on pathological gambling, schizophrenia, substance abuse/dependence, the risk of suicide in psychiatric patients, trauma and comorbidity, criminal justice mental health, and the mental health problems experienced by the homeless. At the national level, Dr. Desai serves as the program evaluator for VA programs on homeless female veterans, and has served on several advisory committees to the VA on the mental health needs of female veterans, with particular attention to military sexual trauma. She is also the program evaluator for specialized PTSD programs and programs serving returning veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan within the VA.
Dr. Resick is a Professor of Psychiatry and Psychology at Boston University. She received her Doctorate from the University of Georgia and served on the faculties of the University of South Dakota, the Medical University of South Carolina and the University of Missouri-St. Louis, where she held an endowed professorship. Dr. Resick has received numerous grants to provide services and conduct research on the effects of traumatic events, particularly on women, and to develop and test therapeutic interventions for PTSD. Specifically, she developed and tested Cognitive Processing Therapy, an effective short-term treatment for PTSD and corollary symptoms. She has published four books and 175 journal articles and book chapters. Dr. Resick has served as President and on the Boards of the ISTSS and the AABT (now ABCT). Dr. Resick has received numerous awards, including the Robert S. Laufer Memorial Award for Outstanding Scientific Achievement in the Field of PTSD from the ISTSS and the 2009 Leadership Award by the Association for VA Psychologist Leaders. Since 2006 she has been leading a national VA initiative to disseminate Cognitive Processing Therapy.
Dr. Ruzek has served as an educator with the National Center for PTSD for over 15 years and holds a faculty appointment at Stanford. He has been a member of the VHA Under Secretary's Special Committee on PTSD and has served on numerous VA educational taskforces and workgroups, assuring PTSD expertise is included in VA educational endeavors. Dr. Ruzek specializes in early intervention to prevent the development of PTSD and co-authored the influential Psychological First Aid manual created jointly by the National Center for PTSD and the NCTSN. His current efforts include disseminating evidence-based cognitive-behavioral treatments for PTSD and developing Internet-based interventions for trauma survivors. He contributed to the development of the joint VA-DoD Clinical Practice Guideline for Management of Traumatic Stress and served as an editor of two editions of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapies for Trauma. Dr. Ruzek is a member of the Board of Directors of the ISTSS, where he served as Vice President from 2006-2007. He also serves on the Board of Directors for the USUHS Center for Deployment Psychology and the MIRECC National Education Committee.
Dr. Spira serves as Director of the Pacific Island Division of the National Center, which facilitates access to care through emphasis on ethno-cultural issues, active duty and Guard/Reserve personnel, and telehealth. Dr. Spira received his MA in Psychology with a focus on Cognitive Neurosciences from UC San Diego; a MPH with social epidemiology emphasis from UC Berkeley, and a PhD with emphasis in Clinical Health Psychology from UC Berkeley. He completed a Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford, and a Research Fellowship in Neurology at Scripps in La Jolla. Dr. Spira directed the Health Psychology and Consultation-Liaison Programs at Naval Medical Center San Diego, served as President of the American Academy of Clinical Health Psychology, and served on the board of the American Board of Professional Psychology. He is currently Clinical Professor, Department of Psychiatry, University of California San Diego. Dr. Spira's research focuses on deployment related issues, including assessment and treatment of mild traumatic brain injury, prevention of PTSD through stress inoculation training, innovative treatments for PTSD including the use of virtual reality exposure therapy, and polytrauma treatment.
