Dear TPN friends,
THE EDITORIAL TEAM & I WISH YOU THE WARMEST WELCOME to Trauma Psychology News’ Spring 2021 issue, the inaugural issue of our 2021-2024 Editorial Trio (Vera Békés, Nicole Mantella, and myself). To the 2017-2020 trio (Jon Cleveland, Wyatt Evans, & Jessica Berndt), thank you for entrusting us with the work that you have beautifully grown over the years. We are also grateful for the section editors who are continuing their terms with us: Elizabeth Carll (International), Irene Powch (Members), Jack Lennon & Emily Rooney (Students), Priscilla Dass-Brailsford (Fellows), and Serena Wadhwa & Omewha Beaton (Book Reviews, now expanded to Book Reviews, Resources, Media, & More). Further, we are honored to bring in a stellar set of section editors who are joining us at the start of our journey: Shavonne Moore-Lobban (Early Career Professionals), Emre Umucu (Military & Veterans), and Claire Starrs (Multicultural & Diversity), with the latter two being new standing sections. We are also looking forward to working with our developing team of copy editors: Romy Felsen-Parsons, Betsy Galicia, Kayleigh Watters, Indy Wickramasinghe, & Linda Zheng. And we welcome any feedback from Division 56 members on this revamped TPN design and platform shift, in which President Tyson Bailey & the Division Council kindly provided support.
Altogether, we hope to bring you a TPN that serves your needs, the needs of our trauma psychology community as well as our allied fields in this unprecedented time. In the midst of multiple syndemics encompassing racism, disease, systemic inequities, and health disparities, we need connection. We need social connectedness and, simply, human connectedness. May TPN serve as one platform for amplifying voices and intersecting values. The values of trauma psychology cannot succeed in a vacuum. We need multidisciplinary, social justice-oriented, and whole human-centered care. This period is demonstrating the importance of integrating mental and physical health fields as well as individuals and systems.
Thus, our core articles examine COVID-19 alongside Veteran health and wellbeing (p. 10), vaccine hesitancy in Black and indigenous communities (p. 12), and pandemic-related help-seeking (p. 16). We weave these topics together with a humble thread of resilience potentiality, as explored in our feature article, “The human healing project: Finding hope and connection one story at a time” (p. 6).
THANK YOU FOR READING THIS LETTER, for choosing to engage in these words at this time. I look forward to hearing your stories and co-creating TPN as a vehicle for connection.
Editorial Trio
Editor-in-Chief: Viann Nguyen-Feng, PhD, MPH
Associate Editor: Vera Békés, PhD
Assistant Editor: Nicole Mantella, PhD
