Brief bio
Leah Blumberg Lapidus, Ph.D., ABPP
Professor Emeritus: Columbia University, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences: Clinical Psychology
Summary of Professional Skills and Expertise
International Human Rights Facilitation: Psychological evaluation, intervention, and testimony for individual survivors of political and human rights violations such as ethnic attacks on Gypsies in countries under the control of the former Soviet Union, political genocide in tribal warfare in the countries of the former Yugoslavia, government-sanctioned terror-directed rapes of wives and female relatives of noncombatants in totalitarian states, and individual domestic violence by American citizens against their immigrant wives, who overcome the threat of separation from their citizen offspring by self-petition for residency and for the withholding of deportation. Elected to Board of Directors, Africans in America, Inc., a not-for-profit 501(C3) organization based in New York .
Credentials/Licenses/Certificates
Diplomate in Clinical Psychology, American Board of Professional Psychology
Diplomate, American Board of Forensic Examiners
Fellow, American Psychological Association
Fellow, American Psychological Society
Fellow, American College of Forensic Examiners
Elected Fellow, The Academy of Clinical Psychology
National and International Disaster Mental Health Services,
Certified Disaster Human Resources (DHRS), American Red Cross
Amnesty International- Survivors Committee
American Psychological Association College of Professional Psychology, Certificate of Proficiency in the Treatment of Alcohol and Other Psychoactive Substance Use Disorders.
Certified for the Professional Practice of Psychology in New York State.
Licensed for the Professional Practice of Psychology in the State of New Jersey.
Licensed Psychologist, State of California Board of Medical Quality Assurance.
Licensed Psychologist: State of Israel, Ministry of Health and Department of Mental Health Services.
Licensed Clinical Psychologist, Instructor and Supervisor for Training in Psychodiagnosis and Psychotherapy: State of Israel, Ministry of Health and Department of Mental Health Services.
Licensed Psychologist, State of Hawaii, Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs.
National Resister of Health Service Providers in Psychology.
New York State Education Department. Approved provider of training in identification, reporting, and intervention in child abuse, exploitation, and maltreatment for mandated professionals.
Summary of relevant work experience
Domestic and International Clinical Practice and Supervision (with local translators when necessary): Coping facilitation, ego-analytic therapy, and short-term stress reduction. Adults, adolescents, children; Individuals, couples, families, groups. Anxiety and affective conditions, trauma, psychoses, personality disorders, situational and adjustment reactions. Empirically validated, research-focused short-term intervention. Analytic reconstructions and time-limited insight-oriented therapy; Psychodiagnosis in optimal functioning and trauma (e.g. for asylum seekers), screening; and clinical, civil and court contexts.
Tenured Professor, Faculty-at-Large, Columbia University, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences: Teaching graduate courses in psychology, including Clinical Methods in Psychological Diagnostic Testing; Interviewing; Projective Techniques; Empirical Studies in Differential Diagnosis and Legal Issues; Psychopathology; Personality Development; Psychotherapy; Teaching and Research in Cross-Cultural Issues in Psychopathology, Resilience and Coping with Stress; Identification, Reporting, and Intervention in Child Abuse and Maltreatment; Introduction to Forensic Psychology; Interdisciplinary Course on Multiaxial Diagnosis: Understanding and Use of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-IV (DSM-IV-TR) and Legal Applications; Clinical Assessment Interview; Supervision of Psychotherapy Practical; Supervision of Supervisors of Assessment; Supervision of Teaching Assistants; managing, directing, conducting, and supervising research in: psychological differentiation, mastery of stress, schizophrenia, drug abuse, sexuality, HIV/AIDS, optimal and pathological development, psycho-historical studies of individual and group behaviors in mass situations; individual and group dynamics in minority subgroups and contrasting socioeconomic conditions nationally and internationally; curriculum development and program planning; coordinating Veterans Administration and university training programs. Full/Tenured Professor, Columbia University, Teachers College, Program in Clinical Psychology.
Recent UN-Related Experience:
Member of a ten-person Delegation for the International Human Rights Declaration of Thies, Senegal as a World Human Rights City, December, 2001.
“Facilitation of Coping with Trauma from Torture and other Human Rights Violations” (12
December, 2001). Presentation and Intervention, Center
for Victims of Torture and Other Crimes Against Humanity.
Dakar, Senegal. (In English and French).
Awarded:
Principal Investigator—Effects of war crimes and human rights violations documented in personal narratives and standardized tests. International Rescue Committee—Emergency
Grant through the SFINGA Writing Center: Pristina, Kosovo.
United
Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the Former
Yugoslavia: War Crimes and Human Rights Violations interviewer
in Kosovo. Evaluation, collection of testimony, intervention
with Kosovar Albanian survivors of war-related and “ethnic cleansing” abuses.
Documentation of hidden groups for (hopefully) direct presentation
by the evaluator at future war crimes trials to be held
in The Hague. Participation in briefing meetings and discussions
with the Tribunal investigation teams in The Hague, Macedonia,
and Kosovo, followed by briefings at Amnesty International
Headquarters, London, and International Rescue Committee,
New York.
Informal interviews with Bosnian Muslim survivors of Serb atrocities, presented at the International Human Rights Conference in Vienna as an Amnesty International Survivors Committee Delegate. The content was shared with members of the Legal Committee for the UN Tribunal.
Management of several projects with international relevance and follow-up studies: Research-Principal Investigator/Project Director
National Institute of Mental Health, Pre-doctoral Fellowship from the U.S. Public Health Service (Grant 2TL MH055917), through the Department of Psychology, New York University. Project: The relationship between cognitive control and reactions to stress: A study of mastery in the anticipatory phase of childbirth (Doctoral Dissertation, New York University).
Dissertation Abstracts International, 1969, 30, 384B. (University Microfilms No. 69-11, 818), 1966-1968. Study including family planning, and healthy childbirth and parenting, applied in England, Ireland, the Netherlands, France, Belgium, Switzerland, Israel, Russia, Poland, West Indies, Nigeria, and China. 1969-1999.
Intervention in war stress and reproduction: Weitzman Institute of Science, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Univ. of Tel Aviv Medical School, OB/GYN, 1986-88,(with Israeli Arab and Jewish citizens).
US Public Health Service: Provision of North American conferences on child and adolescent mental heath, diagnosis, child abuse/exploitation, detection and intervention in Washington, Arizona, and Minnesota to Indian Health Service and Tribal Health Staff Development, management, evaluation.
Anonymous School and Camp: Intervention and Prevention of Child Physical/ Sexual Abuse or Exploitation in Schools, Camps or Transportation Vehicles.
Kids Information Network, Inc.: Extent of Criminal Abduction of Minor Children.
Human Resources Administration, Richmond Home Needs Services. Design and Evaluation Study of the Effectiveness of Parenting Education for home care workers with HIV positive mothers.
Coping Skills and Facilitation of Independent Living : Focused Intervention for Exploited Teens in Transition from Foster Care: Hearts Ease, Inc. , New York City.
US Empowerment Zone Immigrants and Citizens Reduction of Violence and Facilitation of Family Health, Literacy, Educational and Occupational Success. Columbia University, Faculty Advisor, Co-Director and Evaluation of projects in upper Manhattan/Harlem, NY.
United Nations Fourth World Conference
on Women, Beijing, China. Professor Lapidus' research forms
were translated into Chinese and distributed to 800 Chinese
women and men.
City of New York-Domestic
Violence Intervention with immigrant and citizen adults and
children: Alleged perpetrators and complainants. Reduced
violence and increased successful coping in interpersonal
relations in persons participating in the Domestic Violence
Court: Effects of a six-week differentiation furthering intervention
for complainants and defendants. Brooklyn, New York Domestic
Violence Court.
Differentiation Furthering, Focused
Intervention, Family Interaction Facilitation and Early Educational
Activities for Pre-Head Start Aged Children and Families,
Richmond Home Needs Services, Youth-at-Risk Programs
Publications
Seventy-five refereed professional publications plus 10 under review or in preparation; and 8 unpublished manuscripts = 93. Supervisor/sponsor of 65 completed Doctoral dissertations, Columbia University, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (published by University Microfilms, Ann Arbor, Michigan and summarized in Dissertation Abstracts International), and 1 Ph D. expected. Total publications, papers, and sponsored Ph.D. dissertations = 156.
Four selected internationally relevant publications:
--Mshelia,
A.Y.,&Lapidus, L.B.(1990). Depth picture perception
in relation to cognitive style and training in non-western
children. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 21(4),
414-433. (Nigerian 4th graders (N=172) were administered depth
and geometric perceptual tasks and training in a Stratified
Random Assignment design in 2 schools on site in Zaria with
verbal instructions and communications in the local tribal
language).
--Lapidus, L.B. (1991). Cross cultural consistencies in prenatal perceptual patterns and perinatal practices.
International Journal of Prenatal and Perinatal Studies, 3(3/4), 155-167. (Abstract- Zusammenfassung -in
German; Complete Abstract and article in English). (Studies over 20 years in the United States, Israel, Switzerland, and Antigua, West Indies show that individual differences in neutral perceptual tasks, predict relative freedom from cultural pressures in sexual, contraceptive, and family planning behaviors, pregnancy activity, labor, delivery, and post-partum parent-infant interactions across cultures, while specific practices
are culturally relative).
--Lapidus, L.B. (1998). Integrative research and intervention to facilitate child and family development, education, readiness for Head Start, and family self-sufficiency. U.S. Department of Education: Educational Research and Improvement Clearinghouse (ERIC),
ED 424001, 1-29.(Evaluation and implementation of several
cross-cultural community based interventions with families
experiencing poverty and a variety of other social stressors
and trauma including war crimes in their home country,
domestic violence with physical and sexual abuse in immigrant
mothers who risk deportation and separation from their
children if the abusive father is a US citizen who withholds
their “green card”; families with AIDS; persons
in need of English as a Second Language (ESL) in order
to pass a US citizenship exam or High School General Equivalency
Diploma (GED) for employment, etc. are presented in this
paper with relevance to many areas of the United Nations
priorities).
--Lapidus,
L.B., Shin, S.K., & Hutton, M. (2001). An evaluation
of a six-week intervention designed to facilitate coping
with psychological stress. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 57 (12), 1381-1401 (Community dwelling Korean adults (N=40) coping with the stress of severe mental illness were evaluated by Korean mental health staff and, if they met diagnostic and medical health criteria for inclusion, were invited to participate in an enrichment program in addition to their other regular treatments. All invited chose to participate and 38 preferred Korean for their randomly assigned treatment enrichment; 2 preferred English The differentiation furthering intervention group showed more improvement in mental health and objective external behavior immediately after the 6 weeks and at 3 month follow-up than the control group, again supporting the usefulness of this brief, focused, cost effective psychological intervention with international application).
Languages
Mother Tongue: English. Minimal working knowledge of French and Hebrew. Local translators assist Dr. Lapidus when she works with residents, refugees or immigrants.
Ongoing Research: Design, Management, Monitoring, Implementation, Risks/Benefits, and Evaluation
Principal
Investigator: NYYAR “Putting Children First” Summer
Research Mentorships.
New York
Youth at Risk: Woman to Woman Teen Moms’ Program – A
comprehensive intervention with at-risk, underserved citizen
and immigrant teens and their families including babies,
grandparents, and fathers, to increase successful coping
with life tasks, parenting, stress reduction, educational
and economic self-sufficiency.
Additional Professional Service
and Research Activity:
Invited Reviewer for the US Housing
and Urban Development (HUD) Community Outreach Partnership
Centers (COPC), 2000 Grant proposals, Washington DC. Multiple
year proposal budgets including housing, educational, health,
and economic services for non citizens and citizens were
up to multi year grants.
American
Psychological Association National Site Visitor’s
Accreditation Committee.
Review
of training programs for initial accreditation or renewal
from the APA. Responsibilities of evaluators include comprehensive
review of Training Programs leading to the Ph.D. in Clinical
Psychology and American Psychological Association approved
Internships in Psychology. Most recent site visit – Gallaudet
University (for the deaf and hearing impaired), Washington
DC.
National American Red Cross Disaster Mental Health Services (DMHS):
Direct
acute impact trauma reduction services for members of all
groups (US and international citizens) directly affected
-survivors, witnesses, rescuers, family members of deceased
victims, and more distant traumatized persons- at “ground
zero” and
other locations, of the September 11 Terrorist attack on
the World Trade Center. Follow-up brief, structured, core
crisis focused, differentiation furthering, hopefulness
building interventions as needed.
Leah Blumberg Lapidus, Ph.D., ABPP
v.AIA 7-24-02
