Think About Policy Podcast

The Impact of COVID-19 on Veteran Mental Health & Well-being

This episode discusses the impact of COVID-19 on providing support and essential services to Veterans and their families, including concerns regarding Veteran mental health and well-being and recommended actions to take.

Guest: Walidah Bennett, Founder and Director of the Multi-faith Veterans Initiative housed at DePaul University Egan Office for Urban Education and Community Partnerships

Recovery in Community: Veterans and Serious Mental Illness

In this episode, we interview Dimitri Perivoliotis and Jordan Snyder from the VA San Diego Healthcare system about serious mental illness recovery among veterans. 

Dimitri Perivoliotis, Ph.D. is a licensed clinical psychologist at the VA San Diego Healthcare System and Associate Clinical Professor at the University of California San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine Department of Psychiatry. He has been involved in schizophrenia research and clinical practice for the past 19 years. At the VA, Dr. Perivoliotis manages an award-winning, CARF-accredited outpatient mental health clinic that provides recovery-oriented psychotherapies and psychosocial rehabilitation services (PSR) to Veterans with psychosis, and he is the training director of an advanced PSR fellowship program, which was recognized in 2018 with the American Psychological Association Division 18 President’s Excellence Award for training in serious mental illness (SMI). In these settings, he conducts individual and group cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for people with psychosis and co-occurring conditions such as PTSD, and provides supervision, trainings, and consultation on CBT for psychosis to psychology, psychiatry, and social work trainees. Broadly, his research interest is in CBT for psychosis, including mechanisms of the treatment, and adaptations to maximize the efficacy and dissemination of CBT for people with SMI. He has published on topics including CBT, dysfunctional beliefs, negative symptoms, and functional outcome. As a fellow at the Aaron T. Beck Psychopathology Research Center of the University of Pennsylvania, he co-developed Recovery-Oriented Cognitive Therapy for Schizophrenia, an adaptation of CBT designed to address the recovery needs of individuals with poor functioning and severe negative symptoms, which will be outlined in a forthcoming treatment manual to be published by Guilford Press. Subsequently at UCSD he has been a co-investigator on several NIMH-funded studies investigating psychological and digital therapies for people with SMI, including the innovative CBT2Go mobile cognitive behavioral intervention. As a secondary interest, he also serves as a fidelity rater on a Phase 3 clinical trial of MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for PTSD, a novel intervention that has been granted Breakthrough Therapy Designation by the FDA.

Jordan D. Snyder, Psy.D. is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the VA San Diego Healthcare System and Visiting Scholar at the University of California San Diego (UCSD). He is currently working at the Center Of Education Recovery (CORE) clinic, which provides psychosocial rehabilitation services to Veterans with serious mental illness. In this setting, Jordan provides individual and group services to Veterans from a recovery-oriented perspective. Before his fellowship in San Diego, Jordan worked at the Alaska VA in Anchorage providing services to Veterans. Jordan's research interests include global mental health and attitudes towards others and society (e.g., peace and reconciliation) on both an individual and communal scale in the aftermath of conflict. He is also interested in work with forced migrants, including those affected with serious mental illness.

Mental Health among Student Veterans

Listen to our recent discussion on mental health among student veterans with guests Geraldine Gorman, Chris O'Brien, and Patrick O'Carroll. 

Geraldine (Gerry) Gorman, RN, PhD is a clinical Associate Professor in the College of Nursing at University of Illinois Chicago. She facilitated a project entitled the Veterans’ Creative Strength workshop which used the arts to build community and foster support among student veterans. Last spring she created an elective course on War prevention and Peace Promotion.

Chris O'Brien, MSN, RN is a United States Army Combat Veteran who served two tours of duty in Baghdad, Iraq in support of US operations from 2005 to 2010.  At this time he is pursuing a Doctor of Nursing Practice at the University of Illinois at Chicago's College of Nursing, specializing in Psychiatric and Mental Health.  Chris currently works as a Clinical RN in an acute psychiatric unit at a hospital in downtown Chicago, IL.   

Patrick O’Carroll has been an enlisted nurse in the US Army Reserve since 2013 and will be graduating from the University of Illinois at Chicago’s graduate entry Masters of Science in Nursing program in December 2019. He currently works as a nurse in an addiction treatment center, but looks to transition to critical care nursing after graduation.