Trauma Training Pathway: Proven ACT, DBT, and PE Techniques

Sonja V. Batten, Ph.D., is Senior Psychological Health Advisor at Booz Allen and leads the firm’s Behavioral Health Community of Practice. Prior to joining Booz Allen, she worked in the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) in the role of Deputy Chief Consultant for Specialty Mental Health. Her responsibilities included supervising the development of mental health policy related to women’s mental health, military sexual trauma, PTSD, suicide prevention, and substance use disorders, including collaboration with the Department of Defense. She also led the VA’s innovative nationwide mental health public awareness campaign Make the Connection, which won more than 50 awards in 2 years, and spearheaded its complementary social media component.
Dr. Batten was the first Deputy Director of the Defense Centers of Excellence for Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury and the first Associate Director for Women’s Health Research at Yale University. While leading the outpatient and residential PTSD programs for the VA Maryland Health Care System, she established its first mental health outreach and clinical program for veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.
She earned a bachelor’s degree in Psychology from the University of Georgia and a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Nevada, Reno. She is also a certified executive coach and Prosci change management practitioner.

Dr. Matthew Tull is a professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Toledo, in Ohio. He received his doctoral degree in clinical psychology from the University of Massachusetts Boston, following completion of an internship at the Boston Veteran’s Affairs (VA) Healthcare System.

His research is focused on understanding the role of emotion regulation in the development and maintenance of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), as well as a variety of maladaptive behaviors commonly observed among individuals with PTSD such as substance use, risk-taking behaviors, suicidal behavior, and nonsuicidal self-injury.

Dr. Tull has published over 200 peer-reviewed articles, and his research has been funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the National Institute of Mental Health, and the Canadian Institute of Health Research. His program of research has been recognized through awards from the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies and the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies.

Kirby Reutter, Ph.D., DBTC, LMHC, MAC, is a bilingual clinical psychologist who contracts with the United States Department of Homeland Security to provide treatment services for asylum seekers. Dr. Reutter is a TED speaker and the author of The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook for PTSD: Practical Exercises for Overcoming Trauma and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Barbara Olasov Rothbaum, Ph.D., is Director of the Emory Healthcare Veterans Program. She is a professor and Associate Vice Chair of Clinical Research at Emory School of Medicine in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and Director of the Trauma and Anxiety Recovery Program. She holds the Paul A. Janssen Chair in Neuropsychopharmacology.

Dr. Rothbaum specializes in research on the treatment of anxiety disorders, particularly PTSD. She was a member of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) Study on Assessment of Ongoing Efforts in the Treatment of PTSD and briefed the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs and House and Senate Committees on Veterans Affairs and Armed Services on the IOM report results in 2014.

Dr. Rothbaum has been studying PTSD treatments since 1986 and has developed, tested, and disseminated some of the most innovative and effective treatments available for PTSD. She is an inventor of virtual reality exposure therapy and a pioneer in applying it in the treatment of PTSD in combat veterans. She has authored over 350 scientific papers and chapters, published 11 books on the treatment of PTSD, and edited 4 books on anxiety.

She received the Diplomate in Behavioral Psychology from the American Board of Professional Psychology and is a past-President of the International Society of Traumatic Stress Studies. She is on the Scientific Advisory Board for the Anxiety Disorders Association of America and National Center for PTSD and on the Executive Committee of the Warrior Care Network. She is a Fellow of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology, the National Academy of Inventors, the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies, and the American Psychological Association’s (APA) Division 56 (Division of Trauma Psychology).

Dr. Rothbaum received the Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Practice of Trauma Psychology in 2010 for APA Division 56 and received the Robert S. Laufer Award for Outstanding Scientific Achievement from the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies. Her outreach efforts include training community clinicians in evidence-based treatment for PTSD.

Janina Fisher, Ph.D., is a licensed clinical psychologist and a former instructor at Harvard Medical School. An international expert on the treatment of trauma, she sits on the advisory board of the Trauma Research Foundation. She is best known for her work on integrating mindfulness-based and somatic interventions into trauma treatment.

Dr. Fisher is the author of Healing the Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors: Overcoming Self-Alienation (2017), Transforming the Living Legacy of Trauma: A Workbook for Survivors and Therapists (2021), and The Living Legacy Instructional Flip Chart (2022).  More information can be found on her website at www.janinafisher.com.