Aug 21, 1:00 PM EDT

Trauma & Social Justice Work: A Conversation with Adam Brown

Join cofounder, Lauren O'Shaughnessy, and clinical psychologist, Adam Brown, for a conversation about social justice work and trauma. How does activism impact our mental health? What kinds of traumas come with this work? How can we create individual and collective habits that protect us and allow our efforts to be sustainable? Watch Live on Instagram @madeofmillions.

MORE ABOUT ADAM

Adam Brown is a clinical psychologist whose research focuses on identifying psychological and biological factors that contribute to negative mental health outcomes following exposure to traumatic stress and developing interventions guided by advances in cognitive neuroscience. A focus of this research is the use of behavioral and brain-imaging techniques to examine the role of memory and self-appraisals in the onset and treatment of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

Dr. Brown is a member of the Human Rights Resilience Project, an interdisciplinary group of scholars and practitioners carrying out research and creating tools to improve resilience and well-being in the human rights community.

In the Trauma and Global Mental Health Lab, he partners with researchers around the world to assess and develop novel mental health treatments for refugees in diverse contexts.  

Prior to joining the faculty at The New School for Social Research (NSSR), he was a member of the psychology faculty at Sarah Lawrence College, where he held the Sara Yates Exley Chair in Teaching Excellence from 2017-2018. He holds an academic appointment as an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry, New York University School of Medicine and completed a two-year NIH funded postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Psychiatry, Weill Medical College of Cornell University. 

He is the recipient of grants from the National Institute of Health, the Department of Defense, Fulbright, and private foundations. 

About Lauren O'Shaughnessy

Lauren is the editorial director and cofounder at the Made of Millions Foundation. She has been a part of the team since its launch in 2016. She has been open about her personal struggles with Generalized Anxiety Disorder and social phobia. You can follow her on Instagram at www.instagram.com/internet_lauren

About Staying Resilient While Trying to Save the World

People who fight for human rights are some of the most passionate people on the planet. They care deeply about others, the Earth itself, and the importance of creating a more just world.

But there’s darkness to activism as well. While trying to make the world better, you see the worst of it — violence, hate, disrespect and disregard. It can make you question what you’re doing and wonder... What’s the point? It can also seriously impact your mental health. Stress, burnout, trauma, depression, anxiety and other forms of mental strain are common challenges faced by activists of the past and present. And while being under pressure is not always a bad thing, in the long-term, it can negatively affect a person's overall physical and emotional health. Which in turn, makes their fight for change harder and hard.

That's why we've teamed up with Amnesty International for an ongoing series about activism and mental health. We'll be chatting with Amnesty youth activists from around the world about their personal experiences advocating for change, and how these experiences have impacted their emotional wellbeing. Together we'll shed light on the kinds of challenges today's change-makers face, and hope to uncover potential solutions along the way.

Original Series

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