Teachers College, Columbia University, offers two experts whose work includes the study of bereavement in parents who lose children to a traumatic death, resilience of people who have experienced life trauma, and post-traumatic stress disorder in children.

George Bonanno, PhD., Associate Professor of Psychology and Education at Teachers College, has recently completed a 5-year comparative study of coping with the death of a child or a spouse (funded by the National Institute of Health), a multi-dimensional study of emotion regulation, stressful life events, resilience, and adjustment among college students, a study of emotion and well-being among survivors of childhood sexual abuse(in collaboration with researchers at NIH), and several recent studies of resilience and adjustment in the aftermath of the September 11th terrorist attacks in New York City (funded by the National Science Foundation).

Philip A. Saigh, Ph.D., is a Professor of Psychology and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University.  His research interests involve the epidemiology, etiology, assessment, and cognitive-behavioral treatment of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in children and adolescents.  He is currently investigating the relationship between trauma exposure, PTSD, and cognitive functioning.  His books include Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: Theory Research and Treatment and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: A Comprehensive Text (with D. J. Bremner, M.D.).  Teachers College is the largest graduate school of education in the nation. Teachers College is affiliated with Columbia University, but it is legally and financially independent. The editors of U.S. News and World Report have ranked Teachers College as one of the leading graduate schools of education in the country.

This article appeared in the October 3, 2006 edition of the Newswise.

Published Wednesday, Oct. 4, 2006