Patricia T. Spangler, PhD

Research Psychologist, Center for the Study of Traumatic Stress
Research Assistant Professor, Department of Psychiatry
Uniformed Services University

Patricia T. Spangler, PhD, is a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry, Uniformed Services University (USU), and a Research Psychologist at the Center for the Study of Traumatic Stress (CSTS), Henry M. Jackson Foundation for the Advancement of Military Medicine, Inc. She earned a BA in English and an MA and PhD in Counseling Psychology at the University of Maryland College Park. She had postdoctoral fellowships in the Laboratory for the Treatment of Suicide-Related Ideation and Behavior at Uniformed Services University and at the Maryland Psychotherapy Clinic and Research Lab at the University of Maryland.

Dr. Spangler’s program of research is focused on investigating interventions for posttraumatic stress disorder and comorbid disorders in military personnel and veterans, with a particular focus on treating nightmares and sleep disturbance and on treatment response variability to exposure-based treatments. Her current research includes a pilot trial comparing Nightmare Deconstruction and Reprocessing (NDR), a novel exposure treatment for trauma-related nightmares with NightWare, a non-exposure system for treating nightmares. She is also investigating novel methods for assessing PTSD diagnosis using the Clinician Administered PTSD Scale for DSM-5, including testing methods of informant assessment and of utilizing large language model AI for training novice assessors. She has been a CSTS team member since 2013.

Visit ResearchGate for a list of Dr. Spangler’s publications.