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.