Biography
Dr. Difede has consulted to two major corporations affected by the WTC attack: Con Ed and Marsh McLennan (Marsh). Dr. Difede supervised the crisis center for Marsh in the immediate aftermath of the attack and has continued to advise them on establishing mental health services for their employees who escaped, as well as their bereaved families. At Con Ed, she continued her consulting relationship, begun in 1996, by establishing and supervising their mental health screening program for their thirty eight hundred employees who had to provide disaster relief to the WTC area following the attack (e.g., those who had to rewire the NY Stock exchange, etc.)
As an attending psychologist, Dr. Difede is a consultant to the NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital Burn Center for all inpatients and ambulatory patients who require evaluation and treatment for the psychological sequelae to burns. As such, she supervised the care of all burn patients who survived the WTC attack and their families, as NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital Burn Center received all burn survivors of the WTC attack.
Dr. Difede has received numerous grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and private foundations to develop treatments for PTSD following terrorism, burns, and other traumas. She is currently Principal Investigator of NIH funded awards to develop interventions to treat PTSD following burn injury and terrorism in both civilians and disaster relief workers. Following the WTC attack of September 11, 2001, the NIH granted one of the few supplements awarded to Dr. Difede to extend her treatment studies to WTC survivors. She has written numerous articles and book chapters on the assessment and treatment of PTSD, and is regularly invited to address national conferences on these topics. Of note, Dr. Difede has published the first report of the successful use of virtual reality technology for the treatment of PTSD following the WTC and is now developing virtual reality treatments for PTSD following other types of traumas.
Dr. Difede's work has also been featured in many popular media outlets including the New York Times, Crains Business, Newsday, The Wall Street Journal, Washingtonian Magazine, National Public Radio, The MacNeill-Lehrer Report, NBC, CBS, ABC with Peter Jennings, and CNN.
