Lived Experience with PTSD

Christine M. Crawford, MD, MPH
Christine M. Crawford, MD, MPH is the associate medical director for the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) which is the country’s largest grassroots mental health organization. She is an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Vice Chair of Education at the Boston University School of Medicine. She also provides outpatient psychiatric care to children and adolescents at Boston Medical Center. Additionally, she’s a psychiatry consultant for the Boston Public Health Commission’s School Based Health Centers where she provides direct guidance on how best to support the socioemotional wellbeing of children within the Boston Public School System. On behalf of NAMI, she regularly engages with the general public, as well as with organizations, companies, healthcare providers, and fellow clinicians and researchers. She is a trusted source of child mental health expertise for major media outlets including the New York Times, the Washington Post, NPR, the Boston Globe, NBC, and Medscape. She has made on-camera appearances for the Today Show, BBC, and local news affiliates of CBS, Fox, and ABC. She lives with her family in Boston, Massachusetts.

Daphne G. Grady
Daphne has a B. S. in Home Economics Education, and an M.S. In Child Development with a minor in Marriage and Family. She taught a variety of subjects and ages in public and private schools for a number of years before having her son and after he got older. In October of 2000, she volunteered herself into an office manager position which became a paying job and was there for ten years. Since then she has been a personal assistant and a child care center worker. Currently she is a caregiver and a volunteer.

Victoria Harris MD, MPH
Retired forensic psychiatrist
Dr. Harris focused her career on those with serious mental health conditions who were incarcerated, or involuntarily detained for psychiatric care. She spent years providing care, leadership and conducting clinical research in Washington state jails, prisons and federal institutions. Dr. Harris was on faculty with the University of Washington, and part of a multi-disciplinary Department of Corrections / University of Washington team.

More recently, when almost 60 years old, Dr. Harris experienced a catastrophic psychotic break caused by a medication toxicity. Before the cause of her unusual behavior could be determined, she was arrested and left for weeks in solitary confinement, in a small rural American jail. Dr. Harris brings forth the combination of her personal and professional experiences, as an agent of education, hope and change. She serves on the NAMI National and Jefferson County, WA boards.

Sheldon A. Jacobs, PsyD, LMFT
Dr. Jacobs is a licensed marriage and family therapist and he has been providing individual, couples and family therapy to individuals from various walks of life for the past 20 years. He opened his own part-time private practice, Dr. Sheldon A. Jacobs Counseling Services in September 2020, where he works with youth, adults, first responders, and professional athletes. He has taught at the College of Southern Nevada (CSN), the University of Nevada Las Vegas (UNLV) and the University of Phoenix-Las Vegas Campus at the undergraduate and graduate levels.

Dr. Jacobs was appointed by Nevada Governor, Steve Sisolak, in July 2019 to serve on the State of Nevada Board of Examiners for Marriage and Family Therapists and Clinical Professional Counselors. He is the President on the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI)-Southern Nevada Board of Directors, and he was appointed to the Hope Means Nevada board in 2021, which focuses on addressing youth mental health and suicide prevention amongst teenagers across the state of Nevada. In June 2022, Dr. Jacobs was elected to the Board of Directors for NAMI National, which makes him the first Nevadan to ever serve on the national board. He was elected to the NAMI National executive committee, as secretary on June 7, 2023. In 2024, he served on the “mental health in the workplace” committee for NAMI, where he helped develop a guide for employers across the country on how to create a healthy work environment. Dr. Jacobs founded and is the chair of a coalition that is comprised of mental health professionals that addresses the shortage of minority mental health providers in Southern Nevada. In this role, Dr. Jacobs has created a pipeline for students of color to enter the field of mental health at the high school and college levels. The coalition also provides outreach efforts to underserved and underrepresented communities of color to increase awareness of mental health.

When Dr. Jacobs is not practicing, he is usually giving back to his community by offering town hall discussions centered on mental health at schools, community centers and churches where he also shares his story of living with posttraumatic stress, which stemmed from his lifestyle as a gang member during his teenage years. Because of his advocacy work, Dr. Jacobs has received numerous community and national awards. Lastly, Dr. Jacobs has published several professional journal articles and he released his highly anticipated memoir in November 2020, titled “48: An Experiential Memoir on Homelessness” where he went undercover as a homeless man for 48 hours in downtown Las Vegas to raise awareness for homelessness and mental health. Half of the proceeds from his book sales have gone to various organizations in Nevada and Southern California that serve the unsheltered population.

Brit Wanstrath
Brit Wanstrath is the Manager of Workplace Mental Health at NAMI. They advance the implementation of workplace mental health initiatives, maintain external partnerships and collaborations, and serve the NAMI Alliance through resource development and outreach. Brit has lived experience with depression and PTSD and uses that experience to inform their work creating compassionate and actionable resources. Before working at NAMI, Brit worked in research studying predictive biomarkers of PTSD.