Grant: Canada Postdoctoral Research Award (CPRA) program

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is one of the most common mental health conditions among Canadian veterans. Beyond symptoms such as flashbacks and anxiety, one of the most disabling consequences of PTSD is social withdrawal. Many veterans feel the need to keep others at a distance, find social situations overwhelming, or struggle to reconnect even with close family members. This isolation often worsens other difficulties, such as depression or suicidality, and prevents access to care. Current clinical tools are not well equipped to capture these social difficulties. Standard questionnaires cannot measure how veterans actually respond when faced with real social situations, missing the dynamic aspects of interpersonal encounters. This limits our ability to identify which veterans are most at risk of withdrawal and makes it harder to provide tailored treatment. This project aims to develop innovative ways to measure social withdrawal by simulating realistic interpersonal encounters. We will use a new task in which veterans watch people approaching them on a screen and decide their preferred distance to maintain, while we record their feelings and responses. We will also measure brain activity with non-invasive tools (electroencephalography, EEG) to see how flexible or rigid the brain is in adapting to social encounters. By combining these measures, we can create a new "social reactivity profile" that provides a clearer picture of each individual's difficulties. The ultimate goal is to develop new diagnostic tools that can be used in clinics to identify veterans most in need of support, match them with the right therapist and type of psychotherapy, and track progress over time. By improving the way we assess social withdrawal, this research has the potential to reduce isolation, improve treatment outcomes, and help veterans reconnect with others and rebuild meaningful relationships.