Steven Marans, MSW, PhD

Steven Marans, PhD, MSW, is a psychoanalyst who specializes in the evaluation and psychotherapeutic treatment of children, adolescents, and adults who are struggling with interferences with positive feelings about themselves and others, relationships, achievements in daily life, and longer-term goals.

He also specializes in the post-traumatic distress and treatment of acute, early, and long-term reactions to overwhelming events. Marans is the director of the Childhood Violent Trauma Center and co-developer of the Child and Family Traumatic Stress Intervention, a brief, early, evidence-based treatment that has proven effectiveness in interrupting and reducing post-traumatic disorders in children exposed to traumatic events. This intervention is being disseminated broadly both nationally and internationally.

“The most gratifying part of my work is to help individuals, families, and communities mobilize optimal capacities for mastery of internal and external sources of distress that can interfere with feelings of well-being and success,” Marans says.

He says he enjoys helping people to no longer feel alone with their struggles and to discover that there can be new ways of thinking about themselves—as well as a broader range of options as to how they are living their lives.

“The complexity of being human includes not always being able to consciously identify the sources of our distress or counterproductive patterns of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that impact our experiences of ourselves and others,” he says. “Psychotherapy can be a powerful tool to achieve increased understanding of personal challenges and can open the door to new solutions or options to address new or familiar problems.”

Marans is also founder of the Child Development-Community Policing Program, a pioneering collaboration between mental health and law enforcement professionals providing collaborative responses to children and families exposed to violence and/or trauma that occurs in their homes, neighborhoods, and schools. This program has been replicated in numerous communities around the country and abroad.

Additionally, he co-developed the Acute Stress Intervention for Adults, a brief intervention intended to support hospital staff impacted by the psychological demands associated with responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. A training was also developed for mental health professionals implementing the model with impacted hospital staff at Yale New Haven Hospital and elsewhere.

Over the past 25 years, Dr. Marans has worked closely with local, state, and federal agencies on issues related to responding to trauma associated with violence in homes and communities and on terrorism and natural disasters, and he has served on the National Task Force on Children Exposed to Violence, as well as on the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ National Advisory Committee on Children and Terrorism.