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National Council Awards of Excellence 2012
Nominations are now open for the National Council Awards of Excellence in Behavioral Health Organizations and Consumer Leaders to be honored for innovative practices and pisionary leadership at the National Council Awards of Excellence Dinner in April 2012. The deadline for nominations is January 15, 2012. For more information visit: http://www.thenationalcouncil.org/cs/overview_categories
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Better Treatment for PTSD
What happens when fear — a psychological mechanism that protects us from harm — becomes unmanageable after a traumatic event? APS Fellow Edna Foa, one of TIME’s 100 most influential people in 2010, is an expert in the treatment of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other anxiety disorders. She is known for designing “prolonged exposure” or PE, a groundbreaking therapy for PTSD that has been embraced by the US military. PE involves helping patients overcome their fears by gradually facing painful thoughts, memories, and environments. In this video excerpt from CMI Education Institute, Inc. Foa discusses treatment for PTSD.
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Nigel Gopie
Rotman Research Institute, Baycrest www.nigelgopie.com What does your research focus on? How does memory facilitate our communication? Memory underlies our ability to retrieve the name of a colleague or to remember what we said to a friend a week ago so we do not repeat a joke or information. My research focuses on how memory facilitates these socially important tasks. What drew you to this line of research? Why is it exciting to you? Forgetting the names of familiar people and prefacing conversations with, “Have I told you this before?” is not just prevalent among older adults but it is also a common problem among people in my generation.
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Andrew Butler
Duke University, USA http://duke.edu/~ab259/index.html What does your research focus on? Generally speaking, I study human memory and learning. However, I am particularly interested in how the act of retrieving information from memory affects subsequent memory for that information. Many people consider memory retrieval to be a neutral event, much like measuring someone’s weight. Just as stepping on a scale doesn’t change how much someone weighs, memory retrieval is assumed to reveal the contents of memory but leave them unchanged. However, a large body of research has shown that retrieving information from memory actually changes memory.
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Hanna Zagefka
Royal Holloway University of London, UK What does your research focus on? My research focuses on intergroup relations, particularly acculturation and other phenomena affecting ethnic minorities. More recently, I have started to investigate predictors of charitable donations, a line of work I am currently very excited about. I approach this topic from an intergroup perspective — how do group memberships increase or reduce prosociality towards those in need? What drew you to this line of research? Why is it exciting to you?
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Gregory R. Samanez-Larkin
Vanderbilt University, USA What does your research focus on? In general I am interested in how cognition and motivation develop and change over adulthood and into old age. Most of my recent work has specifically examined age-related change in learning and decision making — particularly related to finances. The larger goal of all of this work is to contribute to a more comprehensive model of human aging that integrates evidence and theory from psychology, neuroscience, and economics. What drew you to this line of research? Why is it exciting to you? The specific focus on aging is largely the result of hearing several talks by Laura Carstensen in 2002.
