Part
01
of one
Part
01
Childhood Trauma Specialists - Global
Based on awards given and works published, we have determined that Peter Levine, Sheri Jacobson, Christine Courtois, Patapia Tzotzoli, and James Eyman are examples of best-in-class active clinical psychologists and therapists in the English-speaking world.
DR. PETER A. LEVINE
- Dr. Peter A. Levine earned his Ph.D. in medical biophysics from the University of California and a second Ph.D. in Psychology from International University.
- He has worked to understand and treat trauma for over 40 years and developed the Somatic Experiencing method.
- In 2010, he received "the Lifetime Achievement award from the United States Association for Body Psychotherapy (USABP)" and the honorary Reis Davis Chair in Child Psychiatry.
- He is the author of several books, including "Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma," a bestseller that sold over 250,000 copies in 24 languages.
- He has also authored or co-authored many academic papers that are regularly cited by other researchers.
DR. SHERI JACOBSON
- Dr. Sheri Jacobson is the founder and Clinical Director of Haley Therapy, "London’s largest and busiest chain of private counseling clinics."
- She is accredited by the British Association for Counseling and Psychotherapy (BACP) and earned her Ph.D. in Counseling and Psychotherapy from Regents College as well as several Master's degrees from Oxford and UCL.
- Dr. Jacobson is often cited as an expert by the media and "has appeared in such media outlets as the Times, Guardian, Telegraph, and Financial Times newspapers as well as BBC News, BBC Radio and Bloomberg TV."
DR. CHRISTINE A. COURTOIS
- Dr. Christine A. Courtois received her Ph.D. from the Counseling Psychology program at the University of Maryland.
- She has received "international recognition for her work on the effects of incest, child sexual abuse, complex traumatic stress disorders and other types of trauma."
- Dr. Courtois was appointed chair of the American Psychological Association PTSD Guidelines Development Panel in 2013.
- She has co-authored "Treating Complex Trauma: A Sequenced, Relationship-based Approach" and "Treating Complex Traumatic Stress Disorders in Children and Adolescents, Scientific Foundations and Therapeutic Models," along with many peer-reviewed academic works.
- After closing her own practice in 2016, she began consulting at the Promises Treatment Program in Malibu.
DR. PATAPIA TZOTZOLI
- Dr. Patapia Tzotzoli is "an award-winning Consultant Clinical Psychologist specializing in adult mental health and couples therapy" who runs a private practice in London and operates as the CEO and founder of iConcipio Ltd.
- She is also an associate fellow of the British Psychological Society (BPS), having studied at East London, Oxford and Cambridge universities.
- She has "the Mental Health Psychologist of the Year 2016 award by Medical LiveWire and the Mental Health Psychologist of the Year — UK & Best CBT Practice — UK by the Global Health and Pharma Magazine Awards."
DR. JAMES EYMAN
- Dr. James Eyman is a clinical psychologist at the Heritage Mental Health Clinic in Topeka, KS, working with both children and adults to treat depression and post-traumatic stress disorder and other trauma.
- He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Nevada and completed his postdoctoral fellowship at the Menninger Clinic.
- He has published his research in peer-reviewed journals since 1991 as well as book chapters.
- In 2001, he received the Best Practice Award for Health Plans for his work in assessing suicidal ideations by telephone.
- Other awards include the 2010 Dorland Health People Award for Psychology.
- He accepts new patients both by referral and those who directly contact him.
RESEARCH STRATEGY
Given the incredibly broad scope of this request, we needed a way to narrow down the field. We began by surveying lists such as Best Counseling Degrees' "30 Most Influential Counseling Psychologists Alive Today" to pull names which we could then research. This proved ineffective as most of those individuals had long left clinical practice for pure research, professorships, or book tours. We also strongly suspect that if we had found any candidates in this way who were still field therapists, they would be highly unlikely to have any openings in their schedules due to their fame. Other attempts at broad-based searches simply pulled up what amounted to advertising copy for various clinics.
That being the case, we had to take a somewhat novel approach. While Psychology Today maintains lists of licensed psychologists and therapists, it requires that one first select a country, state, and city to narrow down the field. Therefore, we used Google's ability to search for results within specific domains and sub-domains to take a top-down approach, searching for therapists with specialties in childhood trauma and depression across the sub-domains for English-speaking countries, including the US, the UK, Australia, and so forth. However, this simply pulled up the profiles for the various cities with lists of therapists in each, and so also proved to be a losing strategy.
Lacking the means to conduct a truly global search for therapists in this area (at least, who are still active in clinical work), we took a somewhat arbitrary approach. We semi-randomly selected large cities in English-speaking countries: two in the US, one in the UK, one in Australia, and one in New Zealand. (Canada was deliberately excluded due to being the subject of another brief.) We then quickly scanned multiple profiles of therapists in each of the cities, ensured that they had not announced that they are currently turning away patients, and pulled a record of their research work from Google's Scholar database. Therapists without a body of academic work were rejected, and in cases where two or more were suitable, we chose the one that appears to have the most papers published, conference speeches, awards, etc. However, this resulted in far too many false positives to sort through within the scope of a single Wonder request. In many cases, we found candidates who fit our criteria but were simply not comparable to those found in the Toronto request.
Finally, as a final ditch effort to produce quality candidates, we pulled the bios of active therapists who boasted of receiving one or more awards for their work. This resulted in a bias towards US therapists but provided far more quality candidates than our previous attempts in sufficient numbers to weed out several candidates that did not fit one or more criteria, e.g., who were explicitly not currently accepting new patients and/or who had retired from active clinical work.