Sacha McBain, PhD, is a clinical psychologist and associate professor at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, where her clinical and research work focuses on trauma recovery for people affected by serious injury and illness. She is recognized nationally as a leader in medical traumatic stress.
Her peer-reviewed publications address the conceptualization and treatment of medically induced PTSD, including the ways physical symptoms, threat appraisal and physiological arousal sustain one another, and how prior trauma intersects with medical stressors. She contributed to the American College of Surgeons' Best Practice Guidelines for mental health screening and brief intervention after traumatic injury, work that shapes how trauma centers identify and respond to psychological risk across the care continuum.
She is also co-author of Medical Trauma: Assessment Tools, Coping Skills, and Recovery Strategies for Survivors and Therapists, a workbook written for both patients and clinicians. Her teaching integrates acute care experience with practical frameworks for assessment, biopsychosocial formulation and trauma-informed intervention at patient, provider and system levels, illustrated throughout with clinical examples drawn from injury, critical care, cancer, cardiac events and chronic illness.