STTI Grant Awarded to Debby Phillips
Congratulations to Debby Phillips, PhD, PMHNP, who was awarded a $5,000 Sigma Theta Tau International Grant Award for her research project “Qualitative Research Surfacing the Effects of Violence: PTSD, Substance Abuse, Neurobiology, and Relational Disconnection.” In her abstract for the grant, she writes:
"Human violence is the ultimate form of relational disconnection. The number of women who will experience physical and/or sexual violence in their lifetime is at least one in three. Many female survivors have physical and mental health consequences from these traumatic experiences including neurobiological brain changes causing cognitive and memory problems and affect dysregulation. Subject Population: Forty one women in residential treatment for substance abuse who were diagnosed with PTSD received Seeking Safety therapy as an intervention to learn about safe and healthy coping for PTSD and substance abuse triggers. Sixteen of the 41 women completed all 25 Seeking Safety (SS), one - hour sessions. Research Design: A qualitative study utilizing the audio-taped SS sessions will explore relationships between the personal narratives of the women contained in these completed “cases” and the intersections of these narratives with larger cultural discourses. The research methodology is critical feminist poststructural psychoanalytic discourse analysis. Specific aims of this study are to: 1) describe the discourses of violence victimizations and relational disconnection that surface in the therapy sessions; 2) describe physical and mental health effects associated with violence victimization; and 3) describe discourses of relational connection that surfaced in the sessions. "