Irit Felsen is new member of National Center for Crisis Management and the American Academy of Experts in Traumatic Stress

I recently joined as a member of the National Center for Crisis Management and the American Academy of Experts in Traumatic Stress (http://www.aaets.org/index.htm).

The American Academy of Experts in Traumatic Stress sees as its mission working towards increasing awareness of the effects of trauma and, ultimately, improving the quality of interventions with survivors. This mission is very close to my heart. The mental health profession has a peculiar history in which important knowledge about trauma had been accumulated after World War I, again after World War II and after the Vietnam War but each time, what had been previously learned about trauma was periodically “forgotten”. As a result, survivors of the Holocaust have been neglected and later again, Vietnam veterans, as I reviewed in a recent paper to be published soon by the International Journal of Psychoanalytic Self Psychology. Increasing awareness to the aftermath of trauma is critical for the development of appropriate treatments and in order to make sure that survivors receive appropriate recognition, care and support.

In order to increase awareness to the effects of trauma The American Academy of Experts in Traumatic Stress focuses on the diverse nature of trauma, on dispelling misconceptions about traumatic stress and on the development of multidisciplinary plans for early interventions that might mitigate the development of post-traumatic stress disorders.

Irit Felsen