UW Experts Offer Free Public Talks on PTSD and Mental Health Recovery
CONTACT: Lisa Brunette, (608) 263-5830, lbrunette@uwhealth.org
Madison, Wis. – Can you recover from a major mental illness? And what can be done to help a child recover from trauma?
These topics will be the focus of free community talks by University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health faculty. The talks will be held from 6:30 to 8 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 9, at the Wisconsin Psychiatric Institute, 6001 Research Park Boulevard. The institute has free public parking.
The UW psychiatry department offers these “Focus on Mental Health” talks every October in partnership with Dane County NAMI. Congress established Mental Illness Awareness Week to raise public awareness of serious mental illnesses such as major depression, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. Other diagnoses include post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and anxiety disorders, including obsessive-compulsive disorder and borderline personality disorder.
Dr. Ron Diamond will discuss whether it is possible to recover from a major mental illness and what recovery looks like. Dr. Diamond is a professor of psychiatry and medical director of Journey Mental Health Center, a national model in community psychiatry.
For more than 30 years, Dr. Diamond has been involved in the community-based treatment of persons with severe and persistent mental illness. He has taught and written on a variety of topics, and is the author of several books on psychopharmacology. For more than a decade, he has been interested in how to integrate concepts of recovery and cultural competence into day-to-day clinical practice.
Dr. Ryan Herringa, an assistant professor of child and adolescent psychiatry, focuses on research and clinical work to better understand and treat post-traumatic stress symptoms in youth and their families.
Dr. Herringa earned his M.D. and Ph.D. as part of the Medical Scientist Training Program at the University of Wisconsin. While completing his Ph.D. in neuroscience under the direction of Dr. Ned Kalin, he studied the effects of stress on gene regulation in the amygdala, the brain’s fear center. Following this training, he went to the University of Pittsburgh to complete his residency in psychiatry and a fellowship in pediatric psychiatry. There he began studies using brain imaging to understand how child abuse changes brain function in adults. Clinically, he trained with Drs. Judith Cohen and Anthony Mannarino in the use of Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT) to treat traumatized youth and families.
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