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PHOTO AVAILABLE: Trauma Services Associates Offers Prescription For The African American Community

Black History Month: Healing from past trauma and violence

"The Pain Didn't Start Here: Trauma and Violence in the African-American Community" by Denyse Hicks-Ray, Ph.D., B.C.E.T.S connects the clinical definition of psychological trauma and its effects of violent and maladaptive behaviors presented in the African-American community.

Revealing painful truths about African-American trauma, the book takes the reader on a psychologist's perspective of the journey of intergenerational pain and suffering. It explains how the effect of untreated pain has created a community that lacks cohesiveness and the skills to move forward in a society that would much rather have its citizens clean, safe and doing much less harm to children.

By empowering through education and awareness "The Pain Didn't Start Here" also addresses the lack of skills necessary to move the community from fragmented and broken to healthy and healed. Dr. King Davis, executive director of the Hogg Foundation for Mental Health at the University of Texas believes that "The Pain Didn't Start Here" will go far toward addressing the conflict between the inability of many African-Americans to move forward and their lack of desire.

A native of Philadelphia, author Hicks-Ray's professional career has been dedicated to improving the mental health of women and their children, especially minority and underserved families. As a clinical psychologist with a specialty in psychological trauma, she has devoted her career to providing mental health education, involvement in clinical research, and to the campaigning for local and federal programs directed to services for the underprivileged.

Prior to her founding the African-American Women's Mental Health Authority and Trauma Service Associates she was a correctional program specialist, designing programs in the criminal justice system for women with co-occurring disorders and histories of psychological trauma. Hicks-Ray has given numerous presentations on various topics related to women and children's mental health, especially poor women and minorities.

Hicks-Ray is a much sought-after speaker on topics close to her heart including improving mental health care access and eliminating mental health disparities for vulnerable people, African-American women's mental health and the needs of young people (health and otherwise).

Hicks-Ray has received numerous prestigious professional and community awards, including the Extraordinary Woman Award of 2001. Most recently, the DENRAH Foundation created a scholarship in her honor. Two recipients each year will be selected from underprivileged and minority applicants to receive full fellow's scholarships. The first "Hicks' Scholars" began doctoral studies in Fall 2002. Hicks-Ray is co-author of the "Surgeon General's Report on Mental Health: Culture, Race, and Ethnicity."

     
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