Psychological Oversight

SPA offers highly experienced and very senior operational psychologists to provide psychological oversight to various military high risk training programs. The most well-known is the training program that teaches soldiers how to survive in a captivity environment. This program is referred to as SERE training, for Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape training. Due to the high level of stress involved in this training, there is a greater than normal risk of negative psychological reactions to the training, and of training errors due to the need for a realistic setting. In some cases, our psychologists have been providing psychological staff oversight to SERE as well as other similar training programs for over thirty years. As a result, we bring a depth of experience and background that focuses on maintaining the safety of such training and on helping ensure effective learning occurs. We have approximately a dozen operational psychologists certified to provide this type of oversight to SERE training, and another dozen who are certified to provide psychological support to individuals, both military and civilian, returning from captivity. Although this is the best-known training program that requires operational psychology support, there are a number of other more sensitive programs that we support in a similar manner.