Raymond Monsour Scurfield, DSW, ACSW, LCSW

Fellow- Mississippi

Member- Combat Stress Board

Dr. Ray Scurfield is Professor Emeritus of Social Work and former Director of the Katrina Research Center, University of Southern Mississippi (USM). He is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with Advanced Psychotherapy in Gulfport, MS. In his USM teaching career (1998 – 2011), he was awarded 15 teaching, scholarship and service awards. He was the Mississippi State NASW 2012 Social Work Lifetime Achievement Award winner “for his outstanding contributions to social work education, research and veterans services”, and the 2006 Social Worker of the Year for his post-Katrina efforts in helping faculty, staff and students. His MSW (1967) and Doctor of Social Work (1979) are from the University of Southern California.

Dr. Scurfield was an Army ROTC Distinguished Military Graduate, Dickinson College, and served four years active duty as a social work officer, to include a year in Vietnam on one of the Army’s two psychiatric teams. Then, during Dr. Scurfield’s 25-year career with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, he was a leader of regional and national PTSD programs in Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and Tacoma, WA, as well as the initial Director of the VA’s National Center for PTSD in Honolulu. He co-led two return trips to peace-time Vietnam with combat veterans. He received numerous awards and recognitions, to include the VA’s prestigious national Olin E. Teague National VA Award recipient “… in recognition of your extraordinary contributions benefiting war-injured veterans. Your achievements in the study and treatment of PTSD have become landmarks in psychiatry.” [President Ronald Reagan. Nov. 21, 1988]. Also, he received the National Lifetime Achievement Award from the National office, National Association of Social Workers (NASW): “Dr. Scurfield is Professor Emeritus of Social Work at the University of Southern Mississippi. In his 45-year career, Scurfield has made extraordinary contributions to the profession and society. Dr. Scurfield has a distinguished reputation in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a clinician, innovative therapy and program developer, educator, and researcher publishing on topics such as Vietnam War and other war-related trauma, post-disaster interventions, race-related trauma, and exposure and experientially-based therapy.” NASW, National Office. December 22, 2012.

Dr. Scurfield’s 70 publications include several about Hurricane Katrina, and articles, book chapters and his Vietnam Trilogy of single-author books about war trauma, the most recent War Trauma. LessonUnlearned From Vietnam to Iraq(2006). Most recently, he is co-editor with COL Kathy Platoni of two books on war trauma (Routledge Publishing): War Trauma & Its Wake. Expanding the Circle of Healing (2012) and Healing War Trauma. A Handbook of Creative Approaches (2013). He has made over 350 media appearances, conference and training presentations to include 60 Minutes (in which the program he founded and directed, the PostTraumatic Stress Treatment Program, Tacoma, WA, was featured as a model VA program), Nightline, New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Christian Science Monitor, National Public Radio and numerous NPR-affiliated stations nationwide. He is the lead author of a three-part video series on PTSD group therapy with veterans of three eras of war (WW II, Vietnam and Persian Gulf War), A Journey of Healing, produced by the VA National Center for PTSD in Honolulu (1997) and distributed nationally. Also, the return trip to Vietnam in 1988 that he co-led, the first such trip with a PTSD therapy group of Vietnam veterans, was filmed and produced as a PBS documentary video and released nationally in 1999, Two Decades and A Wake-Up. He is recognized nationally and internationally through his writings and presentations as an expert in the field of war-related post-traumatic stress and natural disaster mental health and he has been a consultant for several organizations, to include ArtReach,Project America and Not Alone.