Community Services Institute to Host Post-traumatic Stress Clinician

SPRINGFIELD — As part of the mission to give caregivers the tools they need to keep their families together and their children safe, Community Services Institute (CSI) is set to host its annual visiting scholars series featuring distinguished scholars in the fields of psychology and psychiatry.

On Friday, May 11 from 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., CSI will welcome psychiatrist Dr. Bessel A. van der Kolk to Springfield College (Room 201 in the Harold C. Smith Learning Commons). He is a clinician, researcher, and teacher in the area of post-traumatic stress. His work integrates developmental, neurobiological, psychodynamic, and interpersonal aspects of the impact of trauma and its treatment. He and his various collaborators have published extensively on the impact of trauma on development, such as dissociative problems, borderline personality and self-mutilation, cognitive development, memory, and the psychobiology of trauma. He has published more than 150 peer-reviewed scientific articles on such diverse topics as neuroimaging, self-injury, memory, neurofeedback, developmental trauma, yoga, theater, and EMDR.

“He is a world-renowned expert working with individuals who have survived developmental trauma. Unfortunately, that’s rampant in our local community,” said Dr. Mark Gapen, a psychologist and director of the Doctoral Intern Program at Community Services Institute. “Developmental trauma and poverty go hand in hand, and clinicians working in community health need to know about how to recognize and treat it.”

The visiting scholars series is presented as part of the ongoing work of teaching and training CSI interns and clinicians to understand the complex field of child abuse and neglect.