Claude CHEMTOB, PHD
Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Pediatrics,
Mt Sinai School of Medicine, New York, USA

Claude M. Chemtob, Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist and researcher specializing in trauma in adults and children. He received his Ph.D. at the University of Michigan in 1980.Chemtob is clinical professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine and currently serves as the Saul Z. Cohen Chair in Child and Family Mental Health at the Jewish Board for Family and Children’s Services in New York City.

He is the principal investigator of a large National Institute of Mental Health funded collaborative between Mount Sinai and JBFCS aimed at translating evidence-based approaches to child trauma assessment and intervention to community service settings. He has published widely on culture and trauma and is a pioneer in the development of information processing approaches to understanding trauma and PTSD, including a hemispheric lateralization theory of PTSD that has received early empirical confirmation.

Chemtob was consultant to the Presidential Commission of the French Republic that established that nation's post-terrorism recovery system and currently consults on terrorism response in Israel in the context of a US-Israel bi-national initiative established by the UJA Federation. He recently served as consultant to the National Advisory Committee on Children and Terrorism.

His work focuses on public health approaches to the identification and treatment of children after a terrorism and disaster and on the impact of domestic violence on children. He has been a pioneer in using community-based interventions following disasters and terrorist attacks. Chemtob has published the only randomized controlled studies of the treatment of children for disaster-related trauma symptoms and for disaster-related Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

He is currently working on a number of child recovery projects in New York City as well as participating in state and city advisory groups in New York. Chemtob is also directing the Ground Zero Infant and Toddlers screening and treatment initiative in Manhattan, a collaboration of JBFCS and Mount Sinai. He is also directing a planning grant to provide long term services to the bereaved children of 9/11. Finally, Chemtob is living a bi-coastal life shuttling between NYC and Hawaii where he continues to direct a research laboratory at the Pacific Islands Division of the National Center for PTSD in Honolulu.