Bessel van der Kolk

Bessel van der Kolk, M.D., is a psychiatrist, researcher, and educator whose work focuses on how children and adults adapt to traumatic experiences. He founded the Trauma Center in Brookline, Massachusetts, and is a professor of psychiatry at Boston University School of Medicine. His research has examined post-traumatic stress, trauma’s effects on brain function and development, dissociation, and self-injury.

Van der Kolk is the author of The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma, a 2014 New York Times bestseller, and contributed the foreword to Let Your Light Shine: How Mindfulness Can Empower Children and Rebuild Communities.