The PTSD SIG is focused on all stages of career mentorship, dissemination of research, and advancement of quality patient care. It provides a venue for professionals from all disciplines to network and create new connections in the field.  

If you’re interested in joining this SIG, please login to your member account and choose Groups from the green menu bar at the top of your screen. Have a question about the member platform? Please contact Vickie Spielman, ADAA Associate Director of Membership and Marketing.

Please view the ADAA SIG Guidelines for responsibilities and expectations. 

SIG Co-Chairs: 

  • Lauren Sippel, PhD - National Center for PTSD Executive Division
  • Michelle Bovin, PhD - National Center for PTSD at VA Boston Healthcare System

Board Liaison: 
Sheila Rauch, PhD, ABPP, Emory University School of Medicine 

2019-2020 Annual Report

Accomplishments

During the past year, Dr. Gutner stepped down as the co-chair of the committee and Dr. Lauren Sippel joined Dr. Bovin as the ADAA PTSD SIG co-chair.  During the 2019 conference, we had a successful PTSD SIG lunch meeting where a number of new members enrolled and many clinicians joined in the discussion about research and training resources. Members were provided with handouts of PTSD resources provided by the National Center for PTSD. The meeting was spent discussing members’ roles in the field and brainstorming about ways to make the SIG more beneficial both at the next ADAA meeting and throughout the year. Members indicated that they would benefit from continuing to learn about relevant presentations and webinars; the SIG chairs continued to inform members of these throughout the year. SIG members were also encouraged to reach out to the leaders and the other members if there were other ways that the SIG could be beneficial.  As a follow-up to the meeting, the SIG chairs have posted more to the online forum over the past year and remain very open to ways in which the SIG can be more active in between annual meetings.  Ideally there will be greater member involvement throughout the year.  
This year we plan to hold another lunch meeting at ADAA in hopes of bringing the PTSD SIG together to discuss ways to make the SIG more active, as well as support networking between members.  In previous years, the PTSD SIG meeting has been a great event with lots of enthusiasm, but the carryover into the rest of the year has been harder.  Part of the benefit of having a PTSD SIG is to expand the trauma network community, both at the conference and in between them.  To facilitate this, we plan to send an online survey to members prior to the 2020 meeting to determine how the time would be best spent; we will use this information to structure the meeting. During our meeting, we are hoping to elicit suggestions and help from members about ways to capitalize on the PTSD SIG to become more interactive between meetings to best meet everyone’s needs.


Plans for the future

Moving forward, the SIG hopes to continue to use the online forum to stay connected with the members in between meetings, as well as sharing new and interesting articles on PTSD, award opportunities, and training and job opportunities.  This community will also continue to be utilized to address the suggestions from the members of areas within PTSD that they would like the SIG to address.  The SIG would also like to sponsor or co-sponsor a live webinar in the area of trauma.  We will be actively looking for suggestions and other members or SIGs to collaborate with on this.   Lastly, we are excited to continue to work with Ms. Ali Klein, a graduate student at Case Western University, to help students get more involved in the SIG. We will continue to work with Ms. Klein and other interested SIG members to help both increase activity within the SIG and ensure that the needs of SIG members across career stages are met.