Professional Biography
Viktoria Vibhakar is a licensed psychotherapist with over 15 years of experience in providing clinical mental health services to children and their families in a variety of settings including child protection/residential care, out-patient mental health, hospital social work and private practice in Southern California. She has worked for several years in the area of disaster mental health and emergency preparedness, and was involved in the crafting of public health policy on national, state and local levels for the US government. She formerly chaired the American Red Cross’s Disaster Mental Health team in Orange County, California and was deployed to New York City after the World Trade Center attacks; as well as to Georgetown, Guyana after a massacre involving children. Most recently, Ms. Vibhakar held a Visiting Clinical Faculty appointment at the University of Southern California (USC) School of Social Work.Ms. Vibhakar relocated to Brisbane in January 2011 and currently convenes the Master of Social Work (Qualifying) Field Education courses for the Logan and Gold Coast campuses.
Contact details for Ms Viktoria Vibhakar
Current teaching area
- Master of Social Work Field Placement
Research expertise
- Child Trauma
- Child Mental Health
- Disaster Mental Health
- International development
Publications
- Gold, J.I., Montano, Z., Shields, S., & Vibhakar, V. (2009). Pediatric disaster preparedness in the medical setting: integrating mental health. American Journal of Disaster Medicine, v4, #3
- Diamond, D.S., Vibhakar, V. (2007). Preparing medical personnel to work a chemical or biological incident: a “Readiness and Resiliency” model. Psychiatric Annals, v37, #11