Annjeanette Elise Belcourt-Dittloff, Ph.D.
University of Colorado at Denver Health Sciences Center
Junior Investigator, Vulnerable Populations
Project Title: Exposure to Violence, Depression, Post Traumatic Stress, Substance Abuse and Healthcare Utilization: The impact of cultural factors within two American Indian communities.
"The technical training provided has resulted in significant developmental gains in my ability to understand and use advanced statistical techniques, present at national conferences, represent and investigate my research interests and questions, establish collaborative relationships with communities and other researchers, and develop as a junior investigator."
Project Description
Belcourt-Dittloff's study is designed to extend our empirical understanding of the impact of domestic and community violence in two American Indian reservation communities. Although the available evidence reveals high rates of exposure to violence and psychiatric disorder within the American Indian population, limited research exists on how to address domestic and community violence in this often underserved population.
Her study examines how sociocultural resources relate to exposure to violence, psychiatric disorder and help-seeking. Identifying a protective role for sociocultural resources could lead to the development of innovative treatment modalities and health care policies to alleviate psychological suffering for American Indians.
She is analyzing data from the American Indian Service Utilization, Risk and Protective Factors Project (AI-SUPERPFP), housed by the American Indian and Alaska Native Programs, at the University of Colorado Denver to explore these relationships. AI-SUPERPFP was a large population-based, cross-sectional epidemiological study of psychiatric disorder, service utilization patterns and risk and protective factors in two American Indian reservation populations.
Previous studies using the AI-SUPERPFP dataset have already provided a great deal of information on mental health in these American Indian populations, but the relationship of sociocultural resources to the links among violence, psychiatric disorder and help-seeking has yet to be explored; the secondary data analyses included in this project seek to fill this gap.
Biography
Annjeanette Elise Belcourt-Dittloff (Blackfeet, Chippewa, Mandan and Hidatsa), Ph.D., is an enrolled member of the Three Affiliated Tribes in North Dakota. She obtained her doctoral degree in clinical psychology from the University of Montana in 2006. At that time, she joined the faculty and Health Sciences Center at the University of Colorado Denver to conduct research related to trauma and resilience in American Indian communities.
Belcourt-Dittloff has a longstanding record of collaborative research with Native communities investigating cultural resiliency, spirituality, adversarial or posttraumatic growth and psychosocial factors involved in depression and suicidal ideation. She has presented her research findings to numerous national conferences and tribal communities and has published in peer-reviewed journals.
Belcourt-Dittloff's clinical experiences inform her research and knowledge base of American Indian communities. She has worked in a variety of clinical settings serving a diverse clientele; most recently she completed an internship with the Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Denver, often addressing veterans' post-trauma reactions. Belcourt-Dittloff has worked extensively to address psychosocial issues with individual clients and has received a variety of specialized clinical intervention trainings and experiences working with clients from a variety of socioeconomic and ethnic backgrounds.
