CTRS Introduction Video with Dr. Benjamin Keyes

0:06Hi, I'm Doctor. Benjamin Keyes and I am the director for the Center of Trauma and Resiliency Studies here at Divine Mercy University. We're very excited to offer this preview a little bit about who we are and how we've grown. Five years ago when I came to the university I was excited to be able to start a program that would train students and the community in aspects of trauma so that they could reach during times of crisis, disaster, or even situational trauma and to be able to be a force that would help others during times that are quite difficult and people suffer. I think we've been successful over the last five years in that we have partnered with Green Cross Academy of Traumatology in offering their array of courses that reach to very particular aspects of trauma.

1:15Their certifications are recognized by the Veterans Administration, FEMA and other organizations in both disaster trauma and long term trauma. So let me go over a little bit about our training levels. Our first two training levels have to do with compassion fatigue. First, compassion fatigue educator course is all about how to take care of yourself during times of crisis and disaster. And secondly, how do you work with other people? Particularly those that are close to you or family or co workers how do you reach people that sometimes have a hard time learning how or maintaining care for themselves during times of extreme stress. The third level of training is in field trauma. We want people to be able to react during times of natural disasters or times when there is a terrorist attack or threat and be able to reach to people and help.

2:28In the field we work with first responders and we work with survivors both. And then there are the long term trauma situations: human trafficking, sexual trauma, sexual abuse, domestic violence these are just to name a few working with suicide and others. We teach a wide array of grief and loss courses psychological first aid because we really want people trained and then those courses lead to certification as a certified clinical traumatologist And then long term are the master traumatologists in the field and the master traumatologists that are clinical. Just a few more courses, mostly in in the areas of complex trauma. And like I said, it reaches both to the field and to the clinical end of this.

3:30Our purpose is to train our students long before they get into their agencies or into private work so that they have a niche working in trauma. And as most of you know, working in the mental health field, trauma permeates just about every aspect of the field. So it's going to come up, you need to know this stuff, and here's a what I think is a fun way of, networking and getting together and working with others. The center does a few other things also. We're involved in research. My current interest in research center around human trafficking, compassion fatigue, and working with dissociative disorders particularly dissociative identity disorder. I'm in the midst of releasing a book on working with complex trauma mostly around the issues of sexual trauma and the research really shows that the models that we're using work well.

4:37We do a lot of advocacy work. We also deploy in fact we have some deployments coming up. We partner alongside of other organizations and we work with their social workers and their counselors in order to train their staff and to reach to the people that are struggling to survive. We try to purposely target countries where there is a lot of trauma and that we just might be able to make a very positive difference in the lives of the people that we touch. Your help and support always come in handy. We're always looking for people to partner with us, to go with us, to train and actually deploy and reach out. We came alongside of the Psychologists Without Borders which we've been told have helped a lot.

5:41We're pretty active here. We want you to join us. We want you to be part of the work that we're doing here at Divine Mercy University. I want to thank you for the time to be able to share this information with you and and really hope that it will inspire you to be part of what we're doing here. Thanks and God bless.