Bessel A. van der Kolk

Bessel A. van der Kolk, MD, is Founder and President of the Trauma Research Foundation. He has spent his career studying how children and adults adapt to traumatic experiences, and has translated emerging findings from neuroscience and attachment research to study a range of treatments for traumatic stress in children and adults. Dr. van der Kolk did the first studies on the effects of SSRIs on posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), was a member of the first neuroimaging team to investigate how trauma changes brain processes, and did the first research linking borderline personality disorder and deliberate self-injury to trauma and neglect in early childhood. He also conducted the first National Institutes of Health–funded studies on eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, yoga, and other treatment interventions. He and his colleagues are currently investigating the effects of psychedelic agents on PTSD. Dr. van der Kolk is author of over 160 peer-reviewed scientific articles, as well as the New York Times bestseller The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma, which has been translated into 38 languages.