Two Presidential Programming Sessions were organized by the National Endowment for the Arts for the American Psychological Association Annual Convention, Washington, DC, on August 8, 2014. This session focused on arts interventions for warriors with psychological illnesses and mild TBI. Chair: Bill O'Brien, National Endowment for the Arts, Washington, DC Participants: Heechin Chae, MD, Fort Belvoir (Va.) Community Hospital Edward A. Roth, MM, Western Michigan University

Biographies (in order of appearance)

Bill O'Brien is Senior Advisor for Program Innovation at the National Endowment for the Arts responsible for exploring, examining and identifying innovative and emerging practices, programs and endeavors in the arts.  O’Brien helped organize two convenings of the nation’s leading artists, scientists and technologists in partnership with the National Science Foundation: Re/search: Art, Science and Information Technology and Symbiotic Art & Science and co-organized a summit investigating New Media Systems with the National Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities.  Most recently, he co-organized a complex-system working group investigation into The Nature of Creativity in the Brain in partnership with the Santa Fe Institute.  O'Brien also heads the NEA/Walter Reed Healing Arts Partnership Initiative, a collaboration between the NEA and the Department of Defense to investigate the impact of Creative Arts Therapies as a formal medical protocol at the National Intrepid Center of Excellence (NICoE) at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland. Heechin Chae, MD, is an attending physician providing rehabilitation services to patients with traumatic brain injury (TBI).  Chae is board certified in Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation (PM&R) and Pain Medicine and received his medical school training at Virginia Commonwealth University. He completed his PM&R residency at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital through the Harvard Medical School system. Following his post-graduate studies, Chae spent more than 15 years at Spaulding, serving as medical director of the Brain Injury Program and an instructor in the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at Harvard Medical School. In 2011, he started a new TBI Department at Fort Belvoir Community Hospital in Virginia. Throughout his career, Chae has received a number of with special recognitions, including the Teacher of the Year award and the Young Mentor Award from Harvard Medical School, and 'Medical All-Star' by the Boston Red Sox. Ed Roth is a sought after presenter regionally, nationally and internationally, most recently at the University of Queensland (Brisbane, Australia), National Institutes of Health (Bethesda, Maryland), Ramon Llull University (Barcelona, Spain) and Oxford University (England). His publications appear in music therapy and science or health related journals including the Nordic Journal of Music Therapy 13(1) (2004), The Case Manager: The Official Journal of the Medical Case Management Society of America (May-June 2004), the Journal for the Professional Counselor (2007), and Perceptual and Motor Skills (2008). Roth has worked in several clinical settings with clients in various neurological, physical and psychiatric diagnostic categories. While working as a teaching and research assistant at the Center for Biomedical Research in Music at Colorado State University, he led music therapy and counseling groups for adolescents diagnosed with post-traumatic stress and acute anxiety disorders from Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo. Prior clinical experiences also include service as a music therapist at Blythedale Children′s Hospital (Westchester, N.Y.), the University of Michigan Medical Center (Ann Arbor, Mich.), and Bronson and Borgess Medical Centers (Kalamazoo, Mich.).