Laura Shannonhouse

Ph.D., University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 2013
Ed.S., University of Florida, 2009
M.Ed., University of Florida, 2009
B.S., University of Florida, 2003

Crisis Intervention & Suicide Prevention
Disaster Mental Health
Religion and Spirituality in Counseling

Laura Shannonhouse is an associate professor in the Department of Counseling and Psychological Services. She has provided counseling and therapy services in various clinical settings: a cancer center, a crisis center, college counseling centers, private practices and hospitals.

She has been deployed to work with disaster-impacted populations both domestically and internationally (e.g. illness-related trauma in South Africa; prolonged grief from daycare center fire in Mexico, post-Katrina charter schools; both southeast Asian and post-earthquake Haitian refugees and urban homeless, etc.). Therefore, her research interests center on crisis intervention and disaster response; she is curious about how people make sense of suffering through their faith.

Specifically, she conducts community-based research to prevent suicide (suicide first aid), and with disaster-impacted populations in fostering meaning-making through one’s faith tradition (spiritual first aid). Currently, she is leading a clinical trial with 600 older adults who receive an eight-week treatment to combat suicide and a series of studies with refugees/IDPs/newcomers in Clarkston to promote meaning-making from suffering. She feels blessed that her lines of scholarly inquiry have been funded by both federal (Department of Health and Human Services), and foundations (John Templeton Foundation) entities.

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