Dr. Lynn van Male (USA)

LynnVanMale Dr. Lynn Van Male, Director, Behavioral Threat Management Program, US Veterans Health Administration (VHA).

Dr. Lynn Van Male, is the Director of the Behavioral Threat Management Program, US Veterans Health Administration (VHA). In that role she also chairs the VHA National Patient Record Flag Advisory Board. Most recently she was manager of the VHA Prevention and Management of Disruptive Behavior (PMDB) program. In her two years of strong PMDB leadership, she redeveloped the program in major ways. She strengthened the core process of Master Trainer identification, selection, and training; reformed the curriculum; and established a broader evaluation program for PMDB, including safety for patients and employees, effectiveness, and comparison with other similar tools. She served for over nine years as a Psychologist on the Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Clinical Team at the Portland VA Medical Center.

Dr. Lynn Van Male earned her undergraduate degree from the University of California, Davis, in 1993, graduating Cum Laude. She holds a Master of Arts degree (1997) and a Doctorate in Philosophy (2000), both awarded in Clinical Psychology from the University of Missouri – Columbia. She completed her American Psychological Association-accredited Clinical Psychology Internship at the Portland VA Medical Center in 2000 and holds an appointment as an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Oregon Health and Sciences University. She is the Vice President of the Association of Threat Assessment Professionals (ATAP) Northwest Chapter.

Dr. Van Male has an extensive history of working to prevent violence in healthcare settings. She has served on the Disruptive Behavior Committee addressing patient on employee violence at the Portland VA Medical Center since 1999, and on the Threat Assessment Teams addressing employee on employee violence at both the Portland VA Medical Center and Oregon Health and Sciences University. Over the course of her twelve-year career with VHA, she has received several awards for service in the areas of Violence Risk and Threat Assessment and service to Returning Soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan. Dr. Van Male is widely sought after as an educator and speaker at the national, regional, and local levels.