Exploring PTSD

soldiers in a world war one trench

A ration party of the Royal Irish Rifles in a communication trench during the Battle of the Somme.

Veterans Day Clarke Forum panel to discuss post-traumatic stress disorder 

On Veterans Day, a distinguished panel of award-winning war correspondents, authors and a U.S. Army clinical psychologist will discuss post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) from multiple perspectives. The event, PTSD: A Panel Discussion, will be held on Tuesday, Nov. 11, at 7 p.m. in the Stern Center Great Room, at 208 West Louther Street. It is free and open to the public. As part of the One College One Community initiative, the event also will be live-streamed so that alumni and parents can watch and participate in an online discussion.

In the wake of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. has seen a large rise in the number of veterans dealing with the psychological aftermath of their experiences. It is estimated that as many as 1 in 5 veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars suffers from PTSD. 

The panelists

Kimberly Dozier is a Peabody Award-winning journalist, contributor to CNN and The Daily Beast and former correspondent for CBS News and the Associated Press. She is the 2014-15 General Omar N. Bradley Chair in Strategic Leadership, a shared position with Dickinson, the U.S. Army War College and Penn State's Dickinson Law. She also is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. In her memoir, Breathing the Fire: Fighting to Survive and Get Back to the Fight, Dozier recounted the car bombing that critically wounded her and killed the Army officer whom her team was filming, his Iraqi translator and her CBS cameraman and soundman. 

Wendy Moffat is an award-winning biographer and professor of English at Dickinson. Her forthcoming book, The Most Terrible Years, is a dual biography that explores the pioneering work of the World War I psychiatrist to first diagnose war neurosis (“shell shock”) and what is now known as PTSD and the World War I journalist Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant, who was badly injured covering the Marne battles for New Republic magazine. Moffat also will moderate the discussion. 

Col. Rebecca Porter is commander of the Dunham U.S. Army Health Clinic at Carlisle Barracks. A board-certified clinical-health psychologist, Porter is a member of the Science Advisory Board for the Military Child Education Coalition, a fellow of the American Psychological Association and a member of the Order of Military Medical Merit. Her Army assignments include serving as congressional liaison in the Office of the Chief of Legislative Liaison, special assistant for Army Well-Being to the chief of staff of the Army, director of psychological health for the Army and chief of the Behavioral Health Division at the Office of the Army Surgeon General.

David Wood is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and the senior military correspondent for The Huffington Post. His series on severely wounded veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting. As a Washington-based correspondent since 1980, Wood has reported on national-security issues at the White House, Pentagon and State Department and has covered conflicts in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Central America. 

The event is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues. For more information, visit http://www.clarkeforum.org/ or call 717-245-1875.

Learn More

Published November 10, 2014