Professor Brian E. Bride, an expert in the field of secondary traumatic stress and compassion fatigue, joined Georgia State University’s Andrew Young School of Policy Studies on August 1 to direct its School of Social Work.
Bride comes to the Andrew Young School from the University of Georgia (UGA), where he directed the School of Social Work’s Ph.D. program. While at UGA, Bride was the principal investigator for a $1.8 million Health and Human Services grant, “Scholarships for Disadvantaged Students,” and the co-investigator for a $3.7 million grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) for the “Adoption of Innovations in Private A&D Treatment Facilities.”
He recently completed an $839,735 research grant with NIDA titled “Substance Abuse Treatment with Traumatized Populations.”
Bride is also the editor-in-chief of Traumatology, a quarterly international journal for professionals who study and treat people exposed to highly stressful and traumatic events.
“We are excited to have such a superb scholar and practitioner to lead our School of Social Work,” says Dean Mary Beth Walker. “His wealth of experience, passion and success in the social work field is a great fit and asset for the Andrew Young School.”
Bride began his passionate pursuit of research on post-traumatic stress in clinicians and human services professionals after becoming exposed to the subject by his mentor, Charles Figley, during his M.S.W. program at Florida State University 20 years ago. During that time, he began development of the Secondary Traumatic Stress Scale (STSS), an instrument that measures such stress in not only clinicians and human service professionals, but also in foster care parents and family members, military spouses and hospice care workers. He completed the STSS during his doctoral studies at UGA.
The editor of four books, eight book chapters, five book reviews and 50 journal articles, Bride has also done significant research in the areas of substance abuse and mental health treatment with HIV-positive and older adults, particularly addressing the success and retention in treatment and the implementation of evidence-based practice.
Bride has presented his research at more than 60 national and international meetings, including the 12th European Congress on Traumatic Stress, the Annual Conference of the Society for Social Work and Research, and the International Conference of Occupational Stress and Health.
A licensed clinical social worker, Bride taught at the University of Georgia for 10 years. Prior to that, he was on the faculty at the University of Tennessee. He holds a Ph.D. in Social Work from the University of Georgia, an M.P.H. from the Harvard School of Public Health, an M.S.W. from Florida State University, and a B.S. from the University of Florida.