Ms. Tanielian discusses the concept of psychological resilience and highlighted how the U.S. Department of Defense has implemented programs to promote psychological resilience in an effort to prepare troops and their families for the challenges of deployment. She also reviews how these approaches have evolved over the past several years and how the concept of Total Force Fitness is shaping future training and prevention efforts within the military.

Ms. Tanielian is a senior analyst at the RAND Corporation. She received an M.A. in psychology from American University. Her areas of research interest include the psychological effects of combat, terrorism and disasters, psychological resilience and suicide prevention, as well as access to, and quality of, behavioral healthcare for returning veterans. Ms. Tanielian has worked on several studies on the behavioral health-related needs of returning Operation Enduring Freedom/Operation Iraqi Freedom veterans and their families, including co-leading the landmark study, “Invisible Wounds of War.” Ms. Tanielian is currently leading a new prospective longitudinal study to follow military families across a deployment cycle and is also the lead on a study to assess the veteran support programs under the Welcome Back Veterans Initiative. She is serving as a co-investigator on a large randomized controlled trial to examine the effectiveness of stepped care for post-traumatic stress disorder and depression within the U.S. Army and has published several peer-reviewed articles and book chapters and served on numerous working groups and expert panels. Ms. Tanielian serves as an ad hoc reviewer for multiple scientific journals. From 2004 to 2012, she directed RAND Corporation’s Center for Military Health Policy Research; in this capacity, she oversaw RAND’s diverse portfolio of research on issues related to military and veterans’ healthcare policy. Ms. Tanielian also was a member of the planning committee for the 2010 Rosalynn Carter Symposium on Mental Health Policy, which focused on the mental health needs of returning veterans