Dr. Danie Meyer is a Clinical Psychologist specialized in experienced trauma and perpetrated violence in communities of flight, i.e., those fleeing war, organized violence, systemic oppression, hunger, extreme poverty, homophobia, transphobia, racism and misogyny.
She holds a PhD in Clinical Psychology with a focus on the development of appetitive aggression in traumatized individuals and communities and a M.S. in Professional Counseling.
She is the founder of Cologne Counseling (www.cologne-counseling.com), offering individual and group mental health and organizational support to LGBTQ & BIPOC migrants and asylum-seekers in Germany.
Danie is a member of vivo international (www.vivo.org), an NGO that aims at research, prevention and therapy of the consequences of traumatic stress on violence and conflict-affected individuals and communities.
From 2013-2018, she served as the Project Coordinator for the European Research Council (ERC) funded Advanced Grant Project “MemoTV- Memories of Traumatic Stress and Violence,” which investigated the epigenetic, psychological and physiological underpinnings of transgenerational trauma in South Africa, Burundi, Brazil and Germany.
She currently serves as Project Coordinator for MemoTV’s ERC Proof of Concept Project: POPP- Putting Offence Prevention into Practice.
Danie is a co-founder of the Narrative Exposure Therapy Collective (NET.Collect).
Dr. Zoë Thomas is a psychiatrist specializing in trauma-focused therapy.
After completing medical school (2012) and psychiatry residency (2017) at McGill, she pursued a fellowship in trauma therapy at University of Toronto (2018).
She then returned to Montreal in 2019 to launch the Trauma-Focused Therapy Program at the Jewish General Hospital, in partnership with Dr. Kate Drury.
The Trauma-Focused Therapy Program is Quebec’s first public, stepped-care, client-centered service for individuals recovering from trauma and abuse, offering ten manualized groups as well as individual therapy, in addition to training residents, psychology interns and fellows.
The program provides sub-specialized rapid-access Narrative Exposure Therapy to individuals in the perinatal period and Indigenous people.
Dr. Thomas lectures on trauma, psychotherapy and antiracism at McGill, and is involved in research on virtual trauma therapy and antiracism process-based pedagogy.
She has partnered with the Cree Health Board to deliver trainings in trauma-informed care. She sits on the Trauma Talks Committee and is a member of Vivo International.
Dr. Natalie R. Stevens is an Associate Professor of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences conjoint with Obstetrics & Gynecology at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, IL.
As a licensed clinical psychologist, Dr. Stevens serves as Assistant Director of the Outpatient Psychotherapy Service and Research Director of the Center for Women’s Behavioral and Mental Health.
Her clinical specialty is treatment of perinatal trauma, depression and anxiety using culturally inclusive approaches. Dr. Stevens is a member of vivo international (www.vivo.org), an NGO that aims at research, prevention and therapy of the consequences of traumatic stress on violence and conflict-affected individuals and communities.
Dr. Stevens‘ research focuses on the impact of trauma-related distress on pregnancy and postpartum mental health and parenting.
She has conducted NIH grant funded research by the Office of Research on Women’s Health on the impact of community trauma on the physical and mental health of parents and caregivers.
Dr. Stevens leads the Perinatal NET Training program at Rush, which focuses NET practice and supervision on the needs of perinatal health professionals and paraprofessionals (counselors, psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, midwives, physicians, infant mental health specialists and doulas) and their clients.
In 2022 she completed the first pilot clinical trial of NET with pregnant individuals, demonstrating feasibility and acceptability for this undertreated group.
Dr. Kate Drury is a clinical psychologist specialized in trauma-focused therapy.
After completing a PhD at Concordia University in 2016, she worked for several years in a residential treatment center providing therapy to individuals struggling with the impact of substance use and post-traumatic stress.
She is currently working, and has been for the past 4 years, as a staff psychologist at the Jewish General Hospital where she, along with Dr. Zoë Thomas, co-founded the Trauma-Focused Therapy (TFT) program.
The TFT is the first specialized psychotherapy program in the province to provide group and individual therapy to individuals recovering from trauma, abuse and neglect. Built on Judith Herman’s stages of recovery, the program offers 10 groups across the three stages as well as opportunities for individual trauma processing, including Narrative Exposure Therapy.
Two branches of the program offer direct access Narrative Exposure therapy to women in the perinatal period & Indigenous people.
Dr. Drury is involved at every level of the program including training psychiatry residents, women’s health psychiatry fellows and psychology interns.
She holds an adjunct position at McGill where she lectures on trauma, trauma-informed care & psychotherapy.
She has collaborated with the Cree Health Board, The Quebec Alliance for Perinatal Mental Health and the CIUSS Central-West of Montreal to provide trauma training.
She has facilitated numerous Narrative Exposure Therapy trainings, and is sub-specialized in Perinatal Narrative Exposure Therapy (P-NET), an adapted NET delivered during the critically important perinatal period.
Dr. Michelle L. Miller is a clinical psychologist specializing in clinical research at the intersection of women’s health and traumatic stress.
She is an Assistant Professor at the IU School of Medicine Department of Psychiatry and developed the Perinatal Traumatic Stress Lab.
The lab recruits pregnant and postpartum women with a history of trauma and PTSD symptoms to participate in individual and small group interventions, including those who are rarely included in perinatal traumatic stress interventions, such as racially and ethnically minoritized individuals, women in recovery from substance use, and rural patients.
Importantly, she has implemented a PTSD screening protocol in a high-risk obstetrics clinic that serves a large proportion of Medicaid recipients and racially and ethnically minoritized women.
Dr. Miller is currently grant-funded to implement screening for trauma exposure and PTSD symptoms in both rural and urban perinatal populations.
She has also established the IUSM Traumatic Stress Clinic, which provides clinical services to anyone in the IU Health system struggling with mental health sequelae following a traumatic event. Further, she created a training curriculum alongside the Traumatic Stress Clinic for clinical psychology trainees to learn assessment of and evidence-based treatments for PTSD.
She is also currently grant-funded to create a training curriculum for IUSM students on how to identify and discuss mental health and experiences of discrimination with perinatal patients.
Dr. Nicole Kremer is a Clinical Psychologist who earned her doctorate from Wright State University in 2001.
She studied health psychology and worked in various health care settings as part of her training and professional experience, with a focus on the mind-body connection.
Additionally, she received training in trauma treatment serving Veterans with PTSD both at the Dayton Veterans Administration Medical Center (VAMC) and at the Phoenix VAMC. She continued her work in trauma at the Philadelphia VA, continuing to serve the Veteran population on the PTSD Clinical Team (PCT). She also taught graduate courses from 2003 to 2022, teaching Ethics and Psychopathology.
She continues to work on the PCT team at the Philadelphia VA where she is trained in Evidence Based Practice, including Prolonged Exposure, Cognitive Processing Therapy, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, and Narrative Exposure Therapy (NET).
She has become the point person for the clinical teams at the Philadelphia VA for NET and is a member of Vivo international.
Her goal is to assist in rolling NET out as a treatment option throughout the VA system.
Like Ariadne and the Labyrinth, we collect the evidence, connect the threads and create red lines for escaping the maze of trauma, violence and isolation. We interweave these red lines into red nets for holding perpetrating individuals and systems accountable.