Dr Jack Saul
Jack Saul Ph.D. is the founding director of the International Trauma Studies Program (ITSP) a research and training institute based in New York City. ITSP is committed to enhancing the natural resilience and coping capacities in individuals, families, and communities that have endured and/or are threatened by traumatic events. He has served on the faculties of New York University School of Medicine – Department of Psychiatry, the New School for Social Research, Clinical Psychology Program, and Columbia University, Mailman School of Public Health. As a psychologist and family therapist, he has created a number of programs both in NYC and abroad for populations that have endured disaster, war, torture and political violence.
His experience in community based mental health and psychosocial response in emergencies includes:
- Co-directing the Post 9/11 Lower Manhattan Mental Health Coordination group for the NYC Dept. of Health and Mental Hygiene’s Project Liberty
- Directing the 9/11 Downtown Community Resource Project – FEMA funded demonstration project in community resilience
- Member of the Kosovo Family Professional Education Project – which helped set up the post-war family and community resilience based mental health system in Kosovo
- Member of the Steering Committee and co-author of the International Organization for Migration’s Manual on Community Based Mental Health and Psychosocial Response in Emergencies.
- Consulting to such organizations as Associated Press, Human Rights Watch and others on development of their stress and resilience programs in response to traumatic and stressful events.
- Helped organize a multidisciplinary mental health response network for COVID response that includes mental health professionals, social scientists, activists, technologists, and artists.
He has written about this work in the book, Collective Trauma, Collective Healing: Promoting Community Resilience in the Aftermath of Disaster (Routledge, 2013). He currently directs a research and interactive art installation, Moral Injuries of War, which includes the voices of military veterans and war correspondents and others who have participated in the recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.