Dr. Eric Crawford is the Chief of Staff for the Sheridan VA Health Care System and is responsible for management and support of clinical programs.
Dr. Crawford earned his Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the Pacific Graduate School of Psychology at Palo Alto University in 2005 and will enter his 17th year of service in the VA in 2017. He began his career in the VA as an Extern and Research Assistant at the Palo Alto VA Health Care System in 2001 and went on to complete a pre-doctoral internship at the Durham VA Medical Center in 2005 and a post-doctoral fellowship in PTSD and Stress-Related Disorders at the San Diego VA Health Care System in 2006. Following the completion of his training, Dr. Crawford joined the National Center for PTSD at the Palo Alto VA Health Care System as a Cooperative Studies Project Director before transitioning back to Durham where he served for several years as Lead Psychologist in the Durham VA Medical Center’s OEF-OIF-OND Program coordinating and providing psychological services to returning Veterans with post-deployment mental health concerns and sequelae associated with polytrauma. Prior to joining the Sheridan system in the fall of 2015, Dr. Crawford operated as an Assistant Professor within Duke University’s Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and as Assistant Director of the Clinical Core within VA’s Mid-Atlantic Mental Illness Research Education and Clinical Center (MIRECC), engaging in collaborative research on post-deployment mental health and providing clinical consultation and program evaluation services to VISN 6 facilities and VA Central Office. Dr. Crawford has been an investigator or clinical consultant on randomized controlled trials evaluating augmentation of existing treatments for chronic PTSD, and contributed to recent research on the effectiveness of trauma-focused psychotherapy in subpopulations characterized by significant medical and psychiatric comorbidity, and factors that drive help-seeking behavior in returning Veterans.