Professor Elissa Brown Awarded $1.6 Million to Provide and Train Staff to Evaluate and Treat Traumatized Children and Adolescents

Recognizing that children who have been traumatized are often more difficult to manage than others, and curious as to why that is and how it could be addressed, Associate Professor of Psychology Elissa J. Brown of St. John’s University’s Department of Psychology designed a program to provide and evaluate different forms of therapy for children who have been traumatized and their parents. 

The Prevention of Adverse Reactions To Negative Events and Related Stress (PARTNERS) program, inaugurated in 2001, helps parents learn effective ways to manage difficult behavior and, at the same time, helps children and adolescents learn strategies to handle their symptoms of anxiety, depression, and anger.

Because of her expertise in this area, Professor Brown was recently awarded a $1.6 million grant from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to provide and train staff in pediatric and psychiatric departments throughout Queens and Eastern Brooklyn to screen, evaluate, and treat traumatized children and adolescents using state-of-the-art techniques. Along with co-investigators at MediSys (which includes Flushing and Jamaica Hospital Medical Centers, Brookdale University Hospital and Medical Center, and a number of satellite clinics), PARTNERS will become a community-based site in the National Child Traumatic Stress Network, establishing the program on the local and national levels.

According to Professor Brown, the children served by the PARTNERS Program have been traumatized by abuse, domestic violence, community violence, disasters and war/terrorism. Her goal for the SAMHSA project is “to take evaluation and treatment services that have a lot of empirical support to an inner city, culturally diverse community who might not other have access to cutting-edge services.” She intends to make “cultural adaptations so we can properly serve the Asian, African, Caribbean and Latino communities.” 

The psychology professor, a licensed clinical psychologist who teaches on the graduate level in St. John’s College of Arts and Sciences, has made the treatment of traumatized children her life’s work. In 2001, she received a 5-year grant from the National Institute of Mental Health to compare different types of therapy for abused children and their caregivers. After the tragic events of September 11th, 2001, she created a 9/11 Bereavement Project that provided and tested therapies for children whose fathers were killed in the line of duty (firefighters, Port Authority workers, police officers, emergency medical services workers) during the World Trade Center attacks on September 11th, 2001. Additionally, she has received funding from the New York State Office of Mental Health to examine therapies for adolescent trauma-survivors in an inpatient psychiatric hospital.

Almost 20 undergraduate and graduate students and post-doctoral fellows are currently involved in the PARTNERS Program at St. John’s. There will be opportunities for additional personnel as the SAMHSA study rolls out. For example, undergraduate students will have a critical role in engaging families of multicultural backgrounds. All PARTNERS Program staff receive “comprehensive training” and, according to Professor Brown, beyond the clinical experience they’ll gain, students will also be mentored about research, advocacy and real world application of her work.

For further information about the PARTNERS Program, Professor Brown can be contacted at browne@stjohns.edu.