Speaker Series

Long COVID

In 2021, the post-COVID condition known as Long COVID received extensive news coverage. Our group’s mission includes addressing manifestations of stress and trauma in patients with COVID. The condition appeared to baffle the scientists, and we wanted to better understand this later development of the illness from a psychological/trauma perspective. Its disabling aspects could undoubtedly result in high stress or even trauma for the individual suffering from this condition. However, as a group of trauma-informed psychologists, we are also well versed in the research demonstrating that psychological trauma can adversely affect the body. We wondered whether trauma (either pandemic related or that occurred pre-pandemic) might play a role in the etiology of Long COVID.

To explore this further, we invited Alla Landa, Ph.D., a psychology professor, and researcher in the Columbia University Department of Psychiatry, to discuss the possibility that her research might shed light on potential psychological mechanisms involved in Long COVID.

Dr. Landa's research has attempted to uncover the etiology of psychosomatic distress and to develop new, effective treatments. Her treatment approach integrates modalities of therapy that have been shown to alleviate psychosomatic distress, including multidisciplinary team care for patients with psychosomatic disorders. We were particularly interested in her paper, Beyond the unexplainable pain: relational world of patients with somatization syndromes, which appeared in the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease in 2012.

Two crucial, mutually understood caveats were present in our discussion. First, any ideas we might derive from our conversation would be purely speculative and require their own investigation. The second was an appreciation for the dangers of describing physical symptoms as having a psychological component, as the unsophisticated listener often makes the unfortunate mistake of dismissing the symptom as “all in the head,” failing to appreciate the complex interplay between the mind and the body.

Dr. Landa accepted our invitation, and we invited others outside our group who were interested in the topic. Her talk generated enormous enthusiasm and requests for a return visit.

Vaccine Hesitancy

Another topical pandemic medical issue was the controversy over what was labeled ‘vaccine hesitancy.’ The long-anticipated development of vaccines against COVID, hailed as a public health breakthrough, was met with enormous enthusiasm by some but reluctance, dissent, and objection by others.

Our group had already published several blog pieces on the topic. Still, we wanted to understand the phenomenon at an even deeper level. We invited Bernice Hausman, Ph.D., Chair of Medical Humanities at Penn State College of Medicine and author of Anti/Vax: Reframing the vaccination controversy, to speak to us. Published in 2019, the book chronicles her investigations into the phenomenon of vaccine dissent in its pre-pandemic manifestation. We wanted to explore the possibilities for understanding how we might apply her findings to the current COVID vaccine situation. Again, the response was overwhelmingly positive and enthusiastic, prompting requests for her to return.

When Dr. Hausman returned, she invited colleague Heidi Lawrence, Ph.D. from George Mason University and author of Vaccine Rhetorics (2020). Dr. Hausman stated that this time she wanted to listen more than she spoke in order to find out what psychologists had to say about the phenomenon. And thus was launched our Speaker Series.

Following is a list of the first installments in our Speaker Series (scheduled to resume in September 2022):