Human-animal connections:Expanding and cross-worlding relational approaches to resilience

Relationships are a major theme within resilience research. Little attention, however, has been given to human-animal relationships – except in the narrow and anthropocentric sense of how they support human wellbeing and help to reduce human trauma. This interdisciplinary article takes a completely different approach. Its core aim is to demonstrate that human-animal relationships are significant for how we think about resilience – and about relationality itself. Ultimately, it underscores the importance of analysing resilience and relationships within multispecies and posthumanist frameworks that respect and reflect crucial connectivities, entanglements and mutualities between human and more-than-human worlds (cross-worlding). The article uses two original case studies to develop its core arguments. The first focuses on the ongoing war in Ukraine and human relationships with companion animals. The second centres on the work of the Mama Tembos in northern Kenya and human relations with wild animals (elephants)

Designing User-Centered Interfaces to Support Clinical Decision-Making and Patient Engagement

The delivery of most psychotherapies has been constrained by data collected from patient self-report and clinician intuition for the last century. Clinicians who use evidence-based treatments need methods, tools, and data to efficiently track, assess, and respond to mental health needs throughout the treatment process. Patients need tools that provide feedback to optimize their therapeutic exercises and increase engagement. In this dissertation, I explore how interfaces shared by clinicians and patients can be used to support this aim in the context of prolonged exposure (PE) therapy, an evidence-based treatment used in treating post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). I focus on the case of designing for United States (US) veterans as well as the clinicians who treat them as US Veterans are disproportionately affected by PTSD due to the nature of their work. In this dissertation, I investigate how to design shared, user-centered interfaces which seek to support clinical decision-making and patient engagement in the context of veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). To lay the groundwork for design, I detail the care ecologies of veterans with PTSD, identifying the human and non-human intermediaries involved in their circles of care as well as barriers to care and future design opportunities. Leveraging this information, I explore how a clinician dashboard for PTSD, sensor-captured patient generated data, and feedback gathered via text message from trusted others (e.g., friends, family) can be designed into a shared interface and support clinical decision-making and/or patient engagement.Ph.D

Military deployment, masculinity and trauma : reviewing the connections

This article reviews the literature on deployment trauma and examines the limitations of conventional understandings of trauma as they relate to veterans’ experiences. It suggests that the failure to take into account social influences and social relationships limits the usefulness of conventional approaches to trauma. The article considers the role that masculinity plays in male veterans’ experience of and sense making about trauma. It is suggested that while formal recognition of posttraumatic stress disorder in the DSM has provided a helpful language for veterans, it is an incomplete response. A new model of masculinity that better enables the male veteran to speak about trauma and to reconnect with others has implications for counselling practice with veterans