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Education

Military Psychiatry

The Center advances the field of military psychiatry through school-based, hospital-based and community-based teaching, military psychiatry fellowships, and participation in military medicine conferences.

The Center’s Director, Robert J. Ursano, M.D., Col, USAF, MC (Ret.), is Professor and Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry of the Uniformed Services University School of Medicine where Center experts serve as faculty for undergraduate medical student education. They also oversee clinical psychiatry clerkships and residency programs in the major military medical centers in the National Capital region such as Walter Reed Army Medical Center, National Naval Medical Center and Malcolm Grow Air Force Medical Center.

In addition to core educational requirements in behavioral science, neuroscience and clinical psychiatry, the Center educates military physicians, psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, nurse practitioners and command about military unique aspects of psychiatry. Examples of this are how to prepare for, mitigate and treat the traumatic stresses of combat and injury; provide grief leadership to boost morale and performance; deal with prisoners of war; and understand the forensic and ethical issues of military medicine. Military psychiatry also addresses the mental health issues of deployment, reintegration and military family health to enhance the resilience of servicemen and women and their families in times of war and peacekeeping in the 21st century environment of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). One Center project, Courage to Care, provides education to military providers and families through an electronic health campaign with fact sheets on military unique health topics.

Center educators provide continuing medical education in military trauma, disaster and terrorism as Visiting Professors at civilian and military medical training centers throughout the country as well as through distance learning.

Military Psychiatry Fellowships

The Center sponsors military psychiatry fellowships that have brought international scholars and clinicians to the Center expanding its academic influence globally. The Center created and runs the first Fellowship in Disaster Psychiatry and Public Health.

Military Families and Children

Military families and children in particular face deployment of their military members as part of everyday life.  These are always stressful events and require changes in the family routines and parenting roles.  In times of war these changes can bring additional stresses.  Both the new demands on the single parent and the absence of the military parent are a challenge for children of all ages.

Dr. Stephen Cozza, Associate Director of the Center for the Study of Traumatic Stress and former Chief of Psychiatry at Walter Reed Army Medical Center was a consultant to the Sesame Street Workshop in the development of a DVD and resource materials to assist military families and children with deployment. 

The Sesame Street DVD, Talk, Listen, Connect: Helping Families During Military Deployment is available in English and Spanish, is designed to help military families with children ages 3-5 cope with feelings, challenges, and concerns experienced during various phases of deployment: pre-deployment, deployment, and homecoming. The DVD features the Sesame Street Muppets and includes a parent/caregiver magazine and poster. The DVD is a partnership of Sesame Workshop and Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., with additional support from the New York State Office of Mental Health (NYSOMH) and the Military Child Education Coalition (MCEC), an organization with whom Dr. Cozza is affiliated.

The DVD addresses separation, fear, family transition, reintegration of deployed military members and the military child’s unique and valuable “ jobs” as part of the military family.

The DVD and materials are available at militaryonesource.com. The Sesame Street video and parent/caregiver materials are also available in English and Spanish for download on the Sesame Street website.