{"id":45481,"date":"2017-05-05T08:45:17","date_gmt":"2017-05-05T12:45:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/?p=45481"},"modified":"2017-05-16T15:06:26","modified_gmt":"2017-05-16T19:06:26","slug":"stressful-situation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/2017\/05\/05\/stressful-situation\/","title":{"rendered":"Stressful situation"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Jeremy Schumm, an associate professor at Wright State\u2019s School of Professional Psychology, will work with Canadian clinicians to provide PTSD therapy to military veterans. (Photo by Will Jones)<\/p><\/div>\n

Military veterans in Canada suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder will soon get the benefit of training from Jeremy Schumm, an associate professor at Wright State\u2019s School of Professional Psychology<\/a> and an expert on cognitive behavioral therapy.<\/p>\n

Schumm, who joined the faculty in October, has been asked to take part in a two-day training session at Ste. Anne\u2019s Hospital in Montreal at the end of May for the hospital and Canadian Armed Forces clinicians there. They want to adopt a model used by Schumm when he was associate director of the PTSD program at the Cincinnati VA.<\/p>\n

PTSD is a serious condition that can develop after a person experiences or witnesses a traumatic or terrifying event in which serious physical harm occurred or was threatened and causes intense fear, helplessness or horror. An estimated 44.7 million Americans struggle with PTSD. Symptoms include disturbing thoughts, feelings or dreams related to the traumatic events.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are seeing similar types of issues in their military that we see,\u201d Schumm said of the Canadians.<\/p>\n

The Canadian VA is invested in disseminating evidence-based psychotherapy to the VA\u2019s throughout Canada. The goal is to have all of the clinicians in all of the VA clinics trained in evidence-based psychotherapy for PTSD so that active-duty military and veterans can get first-line help.<\/p>\n

Schumm has a model on how the Canadian VA can use cognitive processing therapy systemwide. And after the training session, he will do follow-up consultations, offering tips about effectively delivering the therapy.<\/p>\n

The long-term goal is to give Canadian military veterans the skills to cope with PTSD, reduce the number of PTSD-related suicides and enable PTSD victims to function as productive members of society at work, school and home.<\/p>\n

Schumm said the therapy has been proven to work.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not that we just see improvements in PTSD symptoms,\u201d he said. \u201cWe see improvements in these people\u2019s lives broadly.\u201d<\/p>\n

Schumm grew up in St. Marys, Ohio. His father, Greg Schumm, worked as the associate dean of Wright State\u2019s Lake Campus before retiring.<\/p>\n

After graduating from St. Marys High School in 1995, Jeremy Schumm earned his bachelor\u2019s degree in psychology<\/a> from Wright State in 1999 and in 2005 obtained his Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Kent State.<\/p>\n

In graduate school, he became interested in traumatic stress. Seven out of 10 people at some point in their lives will suffer an event that will traumatize them such as serious injury, sexual assault, combat or death of a loved one.<\/p>\n

Schumm was introduced into doing PTSD work with the military when he interned and was trained at the National Center for PTSD at the Boston VA. His research area of interest is the overlap of PTSD treatment and substance abuse disorder treatment.<\/p>\n

Schumm has conducted multiple national trainings for the U.S. VA and Armed Forces. He is the only national master trainer for both cognitive-behavioral conjoint therapy for PTSD and for behavioral couples therapy for substance-use disorders.<\/p>\n

Schumm says most victims of traumatic stress recover naturally by using their social support systems to cope. But things can go awry when they keep their emotions bottled up.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy avoiding and not discussing, it doesn\u2019t give you the opportunity to make sense of what happened,\u201d said Schumm. \u201cThe memory and understanding of the event starts to become fragmented, sometimes the victims come to blame themselves, and that can interfere with recovery.\u201d<\/p>\n

One version of cognitive behavioral therapy is cognitive processing therapy, which teaches people how to recognize unhealthy thoughts, or “stuck points,” in trying to make sense of the trauma.<\/p>\n

The therapy enables trauma victims to change their perspective and think about the trauma in a different way, such as being able to see that the perpetrator was the responsible one and there is nothing that the victim could have done to prevent it.<\/p>\n

Such therapy can be effective and effectively quickly, involving as few as six sessions.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not talking about years of recovery,\u201d said Schumm.<\/p>\n

If victims can\u2019t get professional help, they should turn to social support, talking to friends and family about their issues.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou really need to share your emotions,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Friends and family should encourage them to talk without pressuring them. And they should not send messages that somehow the victim is to blame or should have done something differently.<\/p>\n

Schumm hopes to develop a specialty clinic at Wright State’s Duke E. Ellis Institute for Human Development to treat PTSD and other trauma-related disorders. The Ellis Institute is a 30,000-square-foot facility that houses clinical training and research space for Wright State\u2019s doctoral program in clinical psychology while serving as a clinic for underserved Dayton-area residents.<\/p>\n

Schumm says victims of PTSD often use alcohol or drugs as a way to try to cope.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe research shows very clearly that if you do not treat the PTSD, their ability and likelihood of staying sober and clean from alcohol and drugs is greatly diminished,\u201d he said. \u201cSo if we can fold that in and provide very specific evidence-based treatment that\u2019s highly effective, that would be a real benefit to our local community.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Canadian clinicians want to adopt a model used by Jeremy Schumm when he was associate director of the PTSD program at the Cincinnati VA. Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":45484,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[733,4309,4299,2023,2060,725,731,715,2407,2063,746],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni","category-alumni-association","category-alumni-profile","category-faculty","category-graduate","category-home-news-sidebar","category-lake-campus","category-news","category-professional-psychology","category-psychology","category-science-mathematics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45481"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45481\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45527,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45481\/revisions\/45527"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45484"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}