Terri Tanielian is a senior behavioral scientist and a nationally recognized expert on veteran mental health. Her areas of interest include military and veterans health policy; military suicide; military sexual assault; psychological effects of combat, terrorism, and disasters. She has led multiple studies to assess the needs of veterans and to examine the readiness of private healthcare providers to deliver timely, high quality care to veterans and their families. She has also examined community based models for expanding mental health care for returning veterans and their families.

As the former director of the RAND Center for Military Health Policy Research, she spent a decade overseeing RAND’s diverse military health research portfolio. She was the co–study director for a large, non-governmental assessment of the psychological, emotional, and cognitive consequences of deployment to Iraq and Afghanistan entitled Invisible Wounds of War: Psychological and Cognitive Injuries, Their Consequences, and Services to Assist Recovery. She was also the co-director for RAND’s study Hidden Heroes: America’s Military Caregivers, the first representative study of military caregiving in the United States.

Tanielian has published numerous peer-reviewed articles and reports. She was a member of the planning committee for the 18th, 22nd, and 26th Annual Rosalynn Carter Symposium on Mental Health Policy, which focused on mental health needs and recovery following September 11, Hurricane Katrina, and deployment to Iraq and Afghanistan, respectively. She serves on the National Academy of Medicine’s Standing Committee on Health Threats and Resilience. She earned her M.A. in psychology from American University.

Read more about Terri Here

Links Mentioned in this Episode:

Terri’s Email Address: TerriT@rand.org

Rand publications on military, veteran, and family member mental health

Rand publications on suicide prevention

Terri’s congressional testimony

Terri Tanielian on Twitter