Laurie Fields, PhD

Laurie Fields is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences in the School of Medicine. She has been with the University of California for almost 30 years, conducting research and providing psychotherapy, teaching and clinical training at the UCSF Trauma Recovery Center with a specialization in the treatment of trauma. Her research focuses on developing therapies that integrate the best of evidence-based practices in community settings. She has published a number of articles and book chapters on psychotherapy, trauma, clinical training, and related topics. She recently completed and published an award-winning project entitled "Communities Healing and Transforming Trauma" (CHATT) - a speakers’ collaborative and advocacy program that successfully facilitates posttraumatic growth among trauma survivors. She recently completed a study investigating why trauma recovery is delayed when survivors have little or no memory of the trauma. She is currently conducting a longitudinal treatment outcome study evaluating a novel treatment entitled "Surviving to Thriving: Allies in Recovery" (STAR), that she developed to address problems of existing evidence-based trauma-focused PTSD treatments for traumas in which trauma memory is impaired. She is a licensed clinical psychologist with a practice in adult psychotherapy and clinical consultation/supervision. She combines evidence-based and other psychotherapies for a compassionate, personalized approach to best serve individual needs and preferences for a variety of mental health issues and life problems. She also conducts workshops on vicarious trauma, burnout, wellness, and resilience, and has found that addressing this has been vital to her ability to sustain and enliven her work in facilitating recovery for trauma survivors over the last 25 years.