Institute of Trauma and Victimization (ITV)

Ralph "Gene" Cash, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, received his doctorate from New York University. His research interests include school psychology; psychoeducational assessment, diagnosis, and treatment; depression; anxiety disorders; suicide prevention; forensics, including child custody, wrongful death effects, and disabilities; stress management; and psychology and public policy.

Jan Faust, Ph.D.
Professor, received her doctorate from the University of Georgia, and is founder and director of the Child and Adolescent Traumatic Stress Program (CATSP) and is co-editor of the Journal of Trauma Practice and of the book Conceptualization and Treatment of Child and Adolescent Psychopathology.

Steven N. Gold, Ph.D.
Professor, received his doctorate from Michigan State University, and is founder and director of the Trauma Resolution and Integration Program (TRIP). He is author of the book Not Trauma Alone: Therapy for Child Abuse Survivors in Family and Social Context, and co-editor of the revised edition of the volume Handbook on Sexual Abuse of Children and of the Journal of Trauma Practice. Dr. Gold's clinical and research interests include adult survivors of childhood abuse, delayed recall of abuse, dissociation, and sexual addiction/compulsivity.

Jeffrey L. Kibler, Ph.D.
Professor, completed his doctoral training at the University of Miami (1999). His research is in cardiovascular behavioral medicine, and has focused particularly on behavioral and psychological factors associated with cardiovascular risks in PTSD. Dr. Kibler's research team recently completed a study funded by the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute to comprehensively assess cardiovascular risks and cardiovascular reactivity and recovery patterns among young women with PTSD.

Scott Poland, Ed.D.
Associate Professor, received his doctoral degree from Ball State University. He is internationally known for his work in school crisis and suicide intervention and he is the author of four books and numerous chapters on the subject. He is the chairman of the National Emergency Assistance Team for the National Association of Schools and has over a decade of national crisis experience serving on teams after tragedies such as Columbine and many other school tragedies.

David Shapiro, Ph.D., ABPP
Professor of Psychology and teaches courses in criminal law and in forensic assessment as well as Ethics,, and Supervision and Consultation; he has been actively involved in the development of forensic psychology as a unique discipline for over 35 years and was one of the founders of the American Board of Forensic Psychology. He is particularly interested in how trauma is used (and misused) in courts of law, and has written and lectured in this area. Dr. Shapiro is involved in research developing an assessment instrument to predict domestic violence in populations of male batterer.

Vincent Van Hasselt, Ph.D.
Professor, received his doctorate from the University of Pittsburgh. He is director of the Family Violence Program (IVP), and co-editor of the Journal of Family Violence. He also has co-edited a number of books, including the Handbook of Family Violence, the Handbook of Psychological Approaches with Violent Offenders. Dr. Van Hasselt's clinical and research interests included domestic and other forms of interpersonal violence, criminal offenders, police psychology, criminal investigative analysis (psychological profiling) and apprehension; interviewing and interrogation techniques, cognitive behavioral interventions with juvenile offenders, behavioral criminology and PTSD and other stress-related disorders.

Lenore Walker, Ed.D., ABPP
Professor, received her doctorate from Rutgers University. She is director of the Domestic Violence Institute, which provides education and training, research and public policy initiatives around the world. She specializes in forensic psychology; expert witness testimony; battered women syndrome; violence against women; family and interpersonal violence; sexual harassment; impact of trauma; post-traumatic stress disorder; feminist theory. Dr. Walker is author of The Battered Woman Syndrome, Abused Women and Survivor Therapy: A Practice Guide for the Psychotherapist, Terrifying Love: Why Battered Women Kill and How Society Responds, and many other books and articles.

The programs listed below are all specialty clinical programs within the Psychology Services Center, a publicly-funded facility administered by College of Psychology that provides mental health services to individuals throughout Greater Fort Lauderdale. Each of these clinical specialty programs has a three-fold mission:

1. Provision of specialized psychological services to a particular population of clients exposed to trauma;
2. Doctoral level clinical training in the provision of psychological services to that population of traumatized clientele;
3. Execution of an ongoing program of research on that population of traumatized clientele.

Specialty Clinical Programs

• Child and Adolescent Traumatic Stress Program (CATSP), Director - Jan Faust, Ph.D.: serves children and adolescents experiencing acute, chronic, and/or genetic medical disorders exhibiting a psychological reaction directly related to the medical problem; physical symptoms as a function of behavioral and psychological problems; and psychological problems and physical complaints due to trauma such as child abuse.
• Family Violence Program (FVP), Director - Vincent Van Hasselt, Ph.D.: serves both victims and perpetrators of domestic violence. FVP provides standardized psychological assessment, crisis intervention, short-term therapy, and longer-term treatment. Intervention procedures address a broad base of individual, couple, and family clinical issues.
• Trauma Resolution and Integration Program (TRIP), serves adults age 18 and above who: were sexually, physically, or verbally abused as children or adolescents, and are currently experiencing problems in functioning as a result of the abuse; are experiencing dissociative phenomena that are disturbing to them or are interfering with their ability to function effectively; or have experienced a traumatic event such as rape, physical assault, or a life threatening accident or injury that is creating ongoing distress that interferes with day to day functioning. A combination of individual psychotherapy and participation in coping skills training groups form the core of the treatment package provided by TRIP.