Raymond Monsour Scurfield

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Raymond Monsour Scurfield (born 1943) is an American professor emeritus of social work, The University of Southern Mississippi, Gulf Coast. He retired in November, 2021 from private practice (with Rivers Psychotherapy Services in Gulfport MS). He has continued as the external clinical consultant to the Biloxi VA Vet Center since 2011. He has been recognized for his expertise in war-related and natural disaster Psychological trauma and in meditation. He has published books and articles exploring the effects of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in both combat veterans and disaster survivors, including a trilogy of books about war’s impact. The trilogy’s third installment, War Trauma: Lessons Unlearned from Vietnam to Iraq, was published in October 2006. His three newest books are Scurfield, R.M. & Platoni, K.T. (Eds.). War Trauma & Its Wake. Expanding the Circle of Healing. New York & London: Routledge (2012); Scurfield, R.M. & Platoni, K.T. (Eds).Healing War Trauma. A Handbook of Creative Approaches. New York & London (2013); and Faith-Based and Secular Meditation: Everyday and Posttraumatic Applications. Washington, D.C.: NASW Press (2019)(see review on Amazon.com books).

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Scurfield has also written substantially about the impact of Hurricane Katrina, and helpful interventions to address post-Katrina mental health recovery. Scurfield was recognized as a "Hero of Katrina" by the University of Southern Mississippi (2006), the 2006 Mississippi Social Worker of the Year by the Mississippi Chapter of the National Association of Social Workers, the 2006 and 2007 College of Health Distinguished Teaching Awards and 10 additional awards and recognitions during his tenure at Southern Miss. He received the 2012 Mississippi Lifetime Achievement Award from the Mississippi chapter, National Association of Social Work, and the NASW National Lifetime Achievement Award. NASW PRESS RELEASE :Raymond Monsour Scurfield, DSW, ACSW - Lifetime Achievement Award. In his 50+ year career, Dr. Scurfield has a distinguished reputation in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a clinician, innovative therapy and program developer, educator, and researcher publishing on topics such as Vietnam War and other war-related trauma, post-disaster interventions, race-related trauma, and experientially-based therapy. [see video at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=R41_MFijjl]

Scurfield holds a bachelor's degree in Sociology/Anthropology in 1965 and was a Distinguished Military Graduate, Army ROTC, at Dickinson College, Carlisle, PA), and both a master's degree in social work (1967) and doctorate in social work (1979) from the University of Southern California.

Background

Scurfield was born in Chicago, Illinois, on August 3, 1943, and raised in Elizabeth, Pennsylvania, about 16 miles outside of Pittsburgh. In 1961 Scurfield enrolled at Dickinson College in Carlise, Pennsylvania. Scurfield was commissioned in the Army Medical Service Corps upon his graduation from Dickinson College in 1965.

Scurfield served four years on active duty in the Army (1967–71) as a social work officer. His first duty assignment was as outpatient clinic social worker at William Beaumont General Hospital in El Paso, Texas. He then was deployed to Nha Trang, South Vietnam, in March 1968, and was the social work and administrative officer on a psychiatric team treating psychiatric casualties from I and II Corps of South Vietnam. Dr. Scurfield was promoted from 2nd Lt. to First Lt, and then to Captain, during his deployment to Vietnam. His next duty assignment was as a chief social worker, psychiatric ward, Army Valley Forge General Hospital outside of Philadelphia, for four months. His final assignment was to Okinawa, where he served first as the social work officer and then the Chief, Army Community Service. He was discharged from active duty in May 1971.

Work history

During 1971–72 and 1974–82, Scurfield held several positions at the Brentwood (West Los Angeles) VA Medical Center, including director of the Vietnam Veterans Resocialization Unit and supervisor of the Veterans-in-Prison Program. He was a community social worker with the Queen Liliuokalani Children's Center in Hilo and lower Puna on the Big Island of Hawaii (1972–73). Scurfield was appointed to the national-level position of National Associate Director for Clinical Services from 1982 to 1985 with the VA's Readjustment Counseling Service (the Vet Center Program) at VA HQ in Washington, D.C. Scurfield spent seven years (1985 to 1991) in the Gig Harbor/Tacoma/Seattle area, founding and directing the Post Traumatic Stress Treatment Program at the American Lake VAMC that received national and international attention for innovative trauma healing strategies (helicopter ride therapy; Outward Bound river rafting and rappelling ventures; sweatlodge and Pow-Wow warrior recognition American-Indian-led healing rituals; and then five years (1992 to 1997) in Hawaii, founding and directing the Pacific Islands Division, VA National Center for PTSD that pioneered the inclusion of culturally-sensitive Native Hawaiian healing elements and a focus on Asian-Pacific Islander veterans throughout the Pacific, to include establishing the first VA outreach PTSD service in America Samoa. In 1997, he served in a one-year position with the VA's National Center for PTSD and was outstationed at the Gulfport Division of the Biloxi VA in Mississippi.

In 1998, he retired from the VA and accepted a tenure track position at the University of Southern Mississippi School of Social Work, based at Long Beach. During his 13-year faculty tenure, he received some 15 awards for teaching and service (to include being the 2006 Mississippi Social Worker of the Year (by NASW) and designated as a "Hero of Katrina" by the University of Southern Mississippi—both awards in recognition of his leadership and counseling/debriefing services to displaced faculty, staff and students. And then he was appointed as a Professor Emeritus of Social Work upon his retirement in 2011. He has made 400+ professional presentations nationwide and numerous media appearances, to include 60 Minutes, Nightline, National Public Radio, New York Times , Boston Globe and many other newspaper and media interviews.

Scurfield was a pioneer in returning to Vietnam with veterans with PTSD to help in their healing process. In 1989 he co-led, with April Gerlock, the first return trip to Vietnam by a therapy group of veterans with PTSD. This trip was filmed by PBS and produced as a documentary in 1990, entitled Two Decades and a Wake-up. This return trip also was a focus in Scurfield's first book about Vietnam in 2004 (A Vietnam Trilogy. Veterans and Post-Traumatic Stress, 1968, 1989 & 2000). Scurfield then co-led the first university-based study abroad course to Vietnam (in 2000, with Dr. Andy Wiest and Dr. Leslie Root). This trip was a major focus of Scurfield's second book about Vietnam: Healing Journeys: Study Abroad with Vietnam Veterans (2006).

Dr. Scurfield's two most recent books are: Scurfield, R.M. & Platoni, K.T. (2013). Healing War Trauma. A Handbook of Creative Approaches (Routledge); and Scurfield, (2019), Faith-Based & Secular Meditation: Everyday and Posttraumatic Applications (Washington, DC: NASW Press) and is a vailable on Amazon and from NASW Press.

Related Research Articles

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Psychological trauma, mental trauma or psychotrauma is an emotional response to a distressing event or series of events, such as accidents, rape, or natural disasters. Reactions such as psychological shock and psychological denial are typical. Longer-term reactions include unpredictable emotions, flashbacks, difficulties with interpersonal relationships and sometimes physical symptoms including headaches or nausea.

Somatic experiencing (SE) is a form of alternative therapy aimed at treating trauma and stressor-related disorders like PTSD. The primary goal of SE is to modify the trauma-related stress response through bottom-up processing. The Clients’ attention is directed toward internal sensations,, rather than to cognitive or emotional experiences. The method was developed by Peter A. Levine.

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Prolonged exposure therapy (PE) is a form of behavior therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy designed to treat post-traumatic stress disorder. It is characterized by two main treatment procedures – imaginal and in vivo exposures. Imaginal exposure is repeated 'on-purpose' retelling of the trauma memory. In vivo exposure is gradually confronting situations, places, and things that are reminders of the trauma or feel dangerous. Additional procedures include processing of the trauma memory and breathing retraining.

A trauma trigger is a psychological stimulus that prompts involuntary recall of a previous traumatic experience. The stimulus itself need not be frightening or traumatic and may be only indirectly or superficially reminiscent of an earlier traumatic incident, such as a scent or a piece of clothing. Triggers can be subtle, individual, and difficult for others to predict. A trauma trigger may also be called a trauma stimulus, a trauma stressor or a trauma reminder.

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Jonathan Shay is an American doctor and clinical psychiatrist. He holds a B.A from Harvard (1963), and an M.D. (1971) and a Ph.D. (1972) from the University of Pennsylvania. He is best known for his publications comparing the experiences of Vietnam veterans with the descriptions of war and homecoming in Homer's Iliad and Odyssey.

Cognitive processing therapy (CPT) is a manualized therapy used by clinicians to help people recover from posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and related conditions. It includes elements of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) treatments, one of the most widely used evidence-based therapies. A typical 12-session run of CPT has proven effective in treating PTSD across a variety of populations, including combat veterans, sexual assault victims, and refugees. CPT can be provided in individual and group treatment formats.

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The United States has compensated military veterans for service-related injuries since the Revolutionary War, with the current indemnity model established near the end of World War I. The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) began to provide disability benefits for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in the 1980s after the diagnosis became part of official psychiatric nosology.

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PTSD or post-traumatic stress disorder, is a psychiatric disorder characterised by intrusive thoughts and memories, dreams or flashbacks of the event; avoidance of people, places and activities that remind the individual of the event; ongoing negative beliefs about oneself or the world, mood changes and persistent feelings of anger, guilt or fear; alterations in arousal such as increased irritability, angry outbursts, being hypervigilant, or having difficulty with concentration and sleep.

Transgenerational trauma is the psychological and physiological effects that the trauma experienced by people has on subsequent generations in that group. The primary modes of transmission are the uterine environment during pregnancy causing epigenetic changes in the developing embryo, and the shared family environment of the infant causing psychological, behavioral and social changes in the individual. The term intergenerational transmission refers to instances whereby the traumatic effects are passed down from the directly traumatized generation [F0] to their offspring [F1], and transgenerational transmission is when the offspring [F1] then pass the effects down to descendants who have not been exposed to the initial traumatic event - at least the grandchildren [F2] of the original sufferer for males, and their great-grandchildren [F3] for females.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Richard Bryant (psychologist)</span> Australian psychologist

Richard Allan Bryant is an Australian medical scientist. He is Scientia Professor of Psychology at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) and director of the UNSW Traumatic Stress Clinic, based at UNSW and Westmead Institute for Medical Research. His main areas of research are posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and prolonged grief disorder. On 13 June 2016 he was appointed a Companion of the Order of Australia (AC), for eminent service to medical research in the field of psychotraumatology, as a psychologist and author, to the study of Indigenous mental health, as an advisor to a range of government and international organisations, and to professional societies.

Operational stress injury or OSI is a non-clinical, non-medical term referring to a persistent psychological difficulty caused by traumatic experiences or prolonged high stress or fatigue during service as a military member or first responder. The term does not replace any individual diagnoses or disorders, but rather describes a category of mental health concerns linked to the particular challenges that these military members or first responders encounter in their service. There is not yet a single fixed definition. The term was first conceptualized within the Canadian Armed Forces to help foster understanding of the broader mental health challenges faced by military members who have been impacted by traumatic experiences and who face difficulty as a result. OSI encompasses a number of the diagnoses found in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) classification system, with the common thread being a linkage to the operational experiences of the afflicted. The term has gained traction outside of the military community as an appropriate way to describe similar challenges suffered by those whose work regularly exposes them to trauma, particularly front line emergency first responders such as but not limited to police, firefighters, paramedics, correctional officers, and emergency dispatchers. The term, at present mostly used within Canada, is increasingly significant in the development of legislation, policy, treatments and benefits in the military and first responder communities.

Psychological trauma in older adults is the overall prevalence and occurrence of trauma symptoms within the older adult population. Although there is a 90% likelihood of an older adult experiencing a traumatic event, there is a lack of research on trauma in older adult populations. This makes research trends on the complex interaction between traumatic symptom presentation and specific older adult population considerations difficult to pinpoint. This article reviews the existing literature and briefly introduces the various ways psychological trauma impacts the older adult population.

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