Acclaimed psychiatrist Jonathan Shay to discuss healing combat trauma

I don't know anyone who knows more about PTSD than Jonathan Shay. He should be the expert on TV and doing the interviews, but I doubt many reporters even know who he is.

Acclaimed psychiatrist Jonathan Shay to discuss healing combat trauma

Media contact: Margarita Bauza
E-mail: mbauza@med.umich.edu
Phone: 734-764-2220

ANN ARBOR, Mich. - Psychiatrist, author and MacArthur Foundation Genius Award recipient Jonathan Shay M.D., Ph.D., will hold two special lectures on combat trauma and the trials of homecoming at the University of Michigan on September 23.

Shay will give presentations 10:30 a.m. to noon at the Rachel Upjohn Building Auditorium, 4250 Plymouth Road, Ann Arbor, and at 5 p.m. at Rackham Auditorium, 915 E. Washington, Ann Arbor. Both lectures are free and open to the public. Shay will also sign books at the Rackham event.

Shay has devoted his career to treating Vietnam veterans. In his two books, Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character, and Odysseus in America: Combat Trauma and the Trials of Homecoming, he examines the experiences of combat veterans through the lens of the classical texts, The Iliad, The Odyssey and The Aeneid.

“His work clarifies how military trauma can be conceptualized and understood, drawing on both ancient literature and the experiences of Vietnam veterans,” said Marcia Valenstein, M.D., M.S., associate professor in the U-M Department of Psychiatry and Research Scientist for VA Health Services Research and Development. “His work has been immensely helpful to Vietnam veterans attempting to understand their reactions to combat stress and their symptoms once they return home, and to clinicians charged with helping veterans in picking up their lives. His work has renewed relevance as soldiers return from the long conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

Shay's lectures will honor the work of Don Behm and Tom Devine, two Vietnam veterans who have experienced Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), and who have spent the last decade helping returning Iraq and Afghanistan soldiers get care.

The lectures are sponsored by the U-M Depression Center and Department of Psychiatry, the Department of Veterans Affairs VISN 11, the U-M Student Veterans Assistance Program, and the Welcome Back Veterans project. Several military generals and officers will join Shay at the University talks, including Major General Thomas Cutler, the Adjutant General for the Army and Air Force; Brigadier General James Anderson, the Assistant Adjutant General for the Army; and Brigadier General Carol Ann Fausone, Assistant for Mobilization and Reserve Affairs, Department of Military and Veterans Affairs.

Shay received a B.A. from Harvard University in 1963 and an M.D. in 1971 and Ph.D. in 1972 from the University of Pennsylvania. Since 1987, he has been a staff psychiatrist at the Department of Veteran Affairs Outpatient Clinic in Boston, Massachusetts. In 2001, Shay served as Visiting Scholar-at-Large at the U.S. Naval War College, and from 2004 to 2005, he was chair of Ethics, Leadership, and Personnel Policy in the Office of the U.S. Army Deputy Chief of Staff for Personnel.