PTSD and collective trauma: What does healing look like?

You are invited to a special panel on trauma and healing with Professor Ian Hickie from the Brain and Mind Centre, author and journalist Dean Yates and Dr Vivianna Rodriguez Carreon from the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.

This panel discussion will explore the causes and impacts of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), effective psychological and social interventions, and the healing process from three quite distinct perspectives.

Professor Ian Hickie’s expertise in psychiatry, cognitive therapies and Australia’s mental health system will provide insights into the causes, triggers and treatment of trauma.

Dr Vivianna Rodriguez Carreon will discuss how her research on identifying threats to the empowerment process and agency of people's lived experiences in rural poverty and war led to becoming an action researcher in collective trauma and healing the injury to societies' sense of being and living.

Dean Yates, who details his own experience of moral injury and healing in his newly released memoir – Line in the Sand, will offer an intensely personal perspective of his own mental health struggles caused by layers traumatic experience in conflict zones.

The audience will have an opportunity to ask questions and join the conversation in an extended Q&A following the presentations.

This event is hosted by the Sydney Peace Foundation with the support of The University of Sydney's Brain and Mind Centre and the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.

Professor Ian Hickie is the Co-Director, Health and Policy at The University of Sydney’s Brain and Mind Centre - a global leader in mental health research and digital innovations in care. He was an inaugural NHMRC Australian Fellow (2007-2012), then Senior Principal Research Fellow (2013-2017 and 2018-22), and is now supported at the highest level of personal Investigator Grants (2023-2027). He was an inaugural Commissioner on Australia’s National Mental Health Commission (2012-18) overseeing enhanced accountability for mental health reform and suicide prevention. He is an internationally renowned researcher in clinical psychiatry, with particular reference to digital innovation, youth mental health care and adolescent-onset mood disorders, notably depression and bipolar disorder.

Dr Vivianna Rodriguez Carreon is a transdisciplinary researcher passionate about healing the 3 divides: Self and Self, Self and Other, and Self and the Earth. Her research about human consciousness and capabilities in poverty and war led her to uncover societal and cultural collective trauma compromising the sense of self in human agency. She designed the Peace of Mind and Peace in the World postgraduate unit, which aims to heal the inner and outer peace gap. Internationally she has been serving as a Scientific Advisory Board member for the Inner Development Goals, a framework to accelerate the work towards the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

Dean Yates worked for 26 years at Reuters, the international news agency. He was bureau chief in Iraq, responsible for 100 people, when a U.S. gunship killed two of his staff in 2007. Julian Assange released classified footage of that attack in 2010, shocking millions around the world. Dean was later head of mental health strategy at Reuters from 2017-2020. He is a workplace mental health expert, public speaker, and podcast host. He is also an outspoken advocate on mental health, press freedom and government accountability.

The Sydney Peace Foundation is a not-for-profit foundation based at the University of Sydney. We advocate for peace with justice – recognising that to achieve true and lasting peace, we must not only continue to advocate for ending war and violent conflict but go further and address deep injustices and structural inequality. Our work relies on donations and support from people like you. Please consider donating to support peace with justice in Australia and across the globe.

Donations can be made through a Sydney Peace Foundation donation page, hosted by the University of Sydney. All donations are fully tax deductible.