We are a part of the Stress and Health Research Program at the San Francisco VA Health Care System, which consists of a large group of doctors and researchers. Our primary focus is to gain a better understanding of post-traumatic stress and how to treat it, whether in veterans or civilians. Our research goal is to investigate the psychological and physiological processes, such as learning, memory, and hormone production, in men and women who have experienced a traumatic event. The ultimate goal of our work is to lead to an improvement in PTSD prevention, detection, and treatment.
What is "PTSD"?
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD, is a mental health condition that can have a negative impact on a person's life. PTSD can occur after exposure to a traumatic or life-threatening event and produce a number of symptoms that last greater than 3 months. Symptoms include, but are not limited to: reliving the event, avoidance, nightmares, sleep issues, and changes in mood or behavior. If you would like to view more information about PTSD, please click on the link for the recent articles section.
What is "trauma"?
For the purposes of our research, we define a traumatic event as "an event that involves actual or threatened death, serious injury, or endangerment to yourself or to others."
The types of trauma that we typically see in our research participants include events of a life threatening nature, such as: major disaster, serious accidents/fire, physical or sexual assault/abuse, seeing another person killed/dead/badly hurt, or being in combat.