Dr John Durkin graduated with his PhD from the University of Nottingham in 2010. Previously he had worked in several crisis intervention settings, most notably in New York with firefighters and police officers in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. Concerned at the shortcomings of psychiatry in dealing with psychological trauma he used his insight and experience to develop psychological techniques that surpassed standard treatments. In doing so he discovered the work already established as Traumatic Incident Reduction (TIR) . He now advocates its use in all cases of postraumatic stress and non-psychotic psychiatric conditions.
Dr Durkin is a facilitator and trainer in TIR and Chair of Research at the TIR Association . He uses TIR as the foundation for resolving trauma and promoting posttraumatic growth and is currently engaged with the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) to see TIR as a treatment for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). He has already made the empirical case for TIR with the US government's Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA).
Dr Durkin sees personal growth, not mental disorder, as the natural outcome of traumatic experience. In his view the chaos and confusion that resemble mental disorder are a phase of reorganisation that standard treatments and poor social support interfere with. He sees such interference as an additional block to healing and self-understanding. He applies techniques that appear to remove such blocks and then facilitate progress towards growth. Beyond trauma, Dr Durkin has used these techniques to benefit professionals including senior emergency, medical and military staff, all later reporting enhanced confidence and performance. An injury-affected athlete ran her Olympic qualifying time within days of her session, bringing the field of elite performance into the domain of Dr Durkin's work.
Dr Durkin offers consultancy and crisis intervention training to organisations professionally exposed to trauma, and elite performers who sense a block to realising their goals. He works only with those willing to confront their problem directly and who agree to persist to a positive conclusion.
