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Instructors

Each course will be taught by top researchers and clinicians in the region, led by Janet Brodsky, LICSW.

Someireh Amirfaiz, M.A.

Amirfaiz is the Executive Director of Refugee Women's Alliance, a grassroots nonprofit organization providing comprehensive and holistic services to refugees and immigrant women and families. For the past eighteen years she has been actively involved in refugee and immigrant issues, particularly with the acculturation and mental health issues for this population. From 1994 to 2001, she served as the Director of International Counseling Service, a program that provided mental health services to refugees and immigrants. She has provided consulting assistance and training to numerous agencies and universities on acculturation and resettlement, as well as provision of mental health to refugees and immigrant populations. Someireh has a master's degree in psychology from Seattle University and a B.A. from the University of Washington.

Lucy Berliner, L.I.C.S.W.

Berliner is Director, Harborview Center for Sexual Assault and Traumatic Stress and Clinical Associate Professor, University of Washington School of Social Work and Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. Her activities include clinical practice with child and adult victims of trauma and crime; research on the impact of trauma and the effectiveness of clinical and societal interventions; and participation in local and national social policy initiatives to promote the interests of trauma and crime victims. Berliner is on the editorial boards of leading journals concerned with interpersonal violence, has authored numerous peer-reviewed articles and book chapters, and has served/serves on local and national boards of organizations, programs, and professional societies.

Janet Brodsky, L.I.C.S.W.

Brodsky is the Faculty Coordinator and Lead Instructor for the Certificate in Psychological Trauma. She has 30 years of experience in the field, and is considered an expert in traumatic stress counseling. She works at Washington Women in Need. Brodsky earned her Master's degree in social work at the UW in 1986 and coordinated the Traumatic Stress Program at Harborview Medical Center for eight years. In 2003 she opened Seattle Trauma Associates, where she has provided assessment and treatment to traumatized children and adults, as well as consultation to therapists' interest in trauma-specific therapy. Brodsky received a UW Education Outreach Teaching Excellence Award in 2007.

Allen Dietz, L.C.S.W.

Dietz is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker in Texas, as well as an independent consultant in Wenatchee, WA. He specializes in program management, program evaluation, performance measurement, and leadership training for nonprofit organizations. Dietz volunteers as a national disaster mental health supervisor and disaster trainer with the American Red Cross, and has responded to the World Trade Center terrorist attack and the crash of American Airlines flight 587 in New York City, wildfires in California and Washington, floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, and tropical storms.

Linda Dulan, M.A., L.M.F.T.

Dulan is a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, with over 26 years of clinical experience in a variety of settings, including hospitals and corporate organizations, as well as private practice. She brings years of expertise working with African American and other clients of color.

Afsoon Eftekhari, Ph.D.

Eftekhari earned her doctorate in clinical psychology in 2002 and then completed her clinical internship at the APA accredited Veterans' Administration in Seattle. She then completed a two-year clinical fellowship on the inpatient PTSD unit at the VA, where she worked with trauma patients, and supervised interns and medical residents. Currently she is doing a research fellowship with Dr. Lori Zoellner, serving as grant coordinator and therapist on her PTSD treatment study. She also supervises the independent evaluators, therapists, and other professionals on the treatment grant, and continues to see patients in private practice. Her primary research focus includes emotional processes in psychopathology and treatment outcome, particularly understanding risk and resilience factors associated with the development and maintenance of psychopathology.

Deborah Gray, M.S.W., M.P.A.

Gray is a clinical social worker specializing in attachment, grief and trauma. She enjoys helping children and their parents when deprivation or attachment losses make attachment formation challenging. She received her M.S.W. and M.P.A. from Syracuse University, where she emphasized attachment between high-risk infants/toddlers and parents at the Regional Perinatal Center at Upstate New York's Medical Center. Her methods of working with children reflect an infant mental health perspective. She has 21 years' experience in children's therapy and child placement, and has been a therapeutic foster parent. Gray is a presenter at workshops, where she discusses promoting attachment and reducing the effects of trauma and grief. She has keynoted several conferences, including the Joint Council of International Children's Services, New York State Coalition for Children, and others.

Evan Kanter, M.D., Ph.D.

Kanter is a psychiatrist and neuroscientist at the Seattle V.A., and is on the faculty of the University of Washington. He has studied the role of the stress hormone system in post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and specializes in the treatment of PTSD. Dr. Kanter is Northwest Regional Director of Physicians for Social Responsibility and he has traveled twice to Iraq to help document the health effects of economic sanctions.

Debra Kaysen, Ph.D.

Kaysen is a clinical psychologist and Assistant Professor in the Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences Department at the UW. She received her doctorate in psychology from the University of Missouri. She has received grants from NIAAA and the Alcohol Beverage Medical Research Foundation to research the effects of traumatic events on women, and the interaction between trauma exposure, PTSD, and alcohol problems. Other research has focused on the development of post-trauma symptomatology. She has published numerous articles and received awards, including the New Investigator Award from the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies. She is an attending psychologist at the UWMC psychiatry liaison service and the inpatient psychiatric unit. She conducts clinical supervision with psychiatry residents, interns, and social workers at Harborview Sexual Assault Center.

David Kinzie, M.D.

Kinzie is the Professor of Psychiatry at OHSU and originated its Intercultural Psychiatric Program, in which he is still active. His caseload includes Cambodian, Somali and Latin American patients. After medical school he was a general physician in Vietnam and Malaysia, and, after residency, taught psychiatry at the University of Malaya School of Medicine. He directed the Torture Treatment Center of Oregon and the Child Traumatic Stress Center of Oregon. Kinzie has published over 100 articles and book chapters in the fields of Transcultural Psychiatry, refugee mental health, and PTSD. He is a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and Fellow of the American College of Psychiatrists. He serves in the Steering Committee of the Transcultural Section of World Psychiatric Association.

Elaine Loughlin, M.S.W., L.I.S.W., L.M.F.T.

Loughlin's 36-year practice has included working in mental health clinics as a clinician and program head, as well as teaching graduate students in social work and family therapy. She has private practices in Edmonds and Port Townsend where she sees adults, couples, children and families, and provides consultation. She has implemented many of her ideas and strategies about complex PTSD (C-PTSD). Her work with chronic childhood trauma, in the context of relationships with parent figures that were, in themselves, traumatic, demonstrated that these early experiences had multiple effects on the individual's development. She believes our understanding of the profoundly deleterious effects of complex trauma in childhood is critical to society, which could use this burgeoning field of information to provide resources to families, parents and children.

Laura Merchant, M.S.W., Harborview Center for Sexual Assault and Traumatic Stress, Seattle

Merchant is the Assistant Director of the Harborview Center for Sexual Assault and Traumatic Stress (HCSATS) where she has worked since 1985. In addition to her overall program duties, Merchant directs the Education and Training Program, which provides the contracted statewide training on Child Abuse Investigation and Interviewing to DSHS, law enforcement, prosecuting attorneys and child interview specialists. Merchant is an active member of the APSAC Think Tank on Child Abuse Investigative Interviewing and directed the counseling program and staff professional development at HCSATS for over 10 years. She routinely provides professional case consultation, supervision, and conducts training nationally on sexual assault and related issues and topics.

Sally A. Moore, M.S.

Moore is an advanced doctoral candidate at the University of Washington working towards her Ph.D. in clinical psychology. She earned her master's degree in clinical psychology at the University of Washington in 2004. Currently, she is the Principle Investigator on a series of studies examining emotion regulation and autobiographical memory processes in PTSD and is also a research therapist on the PTSD treatment study under the supervision of Dr. Lori Zoellner.

Rosalie Thomas, Ph.D., R.N.

Initially a skeptic, Thomas has been using EMDR in her psychology practice for 16 years. She is a Facilitator of trainings offered by the EMDR Institute, a trainer for the EMDR Humanitarian Assistance Program, and has served as President of the EMDR International Association. Rosalie, a nurse and psychologist, practices in Gig Harbor at The Family Center for Behavioral Health and specializes in adults with a current or past history of trauma.

Lori Zoellner, Ph.D.

Zoellner is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at the UW. Her research and clinical experience focus on the prevention and treatment of chronic post-traumatic stress disorder, with particular expertise in memory functioning. Zoellner received her Ph.D. in clinical psychology, minoring in behavioral neuroscience. Prior to joining the faculty at UW, she was an Assistant Professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Center for the Treatment and Study of Anxiety. She is well-recognized in the field of traumatic stress studies, and has written and published extensively on the cognitive-behavioral treatment of survivors of sexual assault. She has also given many workshops for practitioners on the prevention and treatment of chronic PTSD.