I am a mental health professional with 18+ years experience in
the field. I have worked in the U.S.A and overseas in inpatient units,
outpatient clinics and residential treatment centers.
I work largely, but not exclusively with children and their
parents. My current specialities include child and adolescent mental
health issues, parenting (particularly special needs children), trauma
and its impact, psychological and educational testing and evaluation,
as well as treatment planning.
I am passionate about removing the myths and stigma's associated
with mental illness, encouraging early identification and intervention
and making psychological theory and research available and accessible
to the general public.
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder encompasses a wide range and my area of
expertise within Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is primarily with
children and adolescents, but I am also familiar with the effects of
combat stress and the impact of war on the individual and family
members.
I hope these pages will prove useful to anyone out there looking for a source of accurate, research based information on Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. I plan to post articles and resources on what PTSD looks like and how it affects people, as well as tips for dealing with PTSD day to day. I will provide web resources I have found particularly helpful (and welcome any site suggestions) and will review selected articles/topics from the current research. I am also open to answering readers specific concerns as best I can.
The following poem, by Mary Oliver beautifully captures some of the central conflicts in post traumatic stress - the need to remember and the need to forget.
In Blackwater Woods
Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars
of light,
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfillment,
the long tapers
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders
of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is
nameless now.
Every year
everything
I have ever learned
in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side
is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in this world
you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it
against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.
-- by Mary Oliver