Shannon Forkus, PhD, the newest faculty member in San Antonio, is a veteran and mental health researcher

Shannon Forkus, PhD, is the newest faculty member to join the San Antonio location of the UTHealth Houston School of Public Health, bringing her unique blend of military service, clinical training, and behavioral health research to her role as an assistant professor.

Getting a PhD and teaching in public health was not at all what Forkus had planned for her life when she was dreaming about her future back in high school. As a teenager she was convinced her future career would begin and end with serving in the military, so she joined JROTC, and right after high school she enlisted in the U.S. Army as a behavioral health specialist.

“The military was a big part of my identity,” Forkus said. “I liked the structure, I liked learning about military culture. It was something that was really personally meaningful to me, and so that community became really important to me.”

Her path to public health began during her military service, when she completed training right here in San Antonio at Fort Sam Houston to become a behavioral health specialist. In that role, Forkus was part of a team that served as the first line of support for service members experiencing mental health challenges such as PTSD, substance use, and other behavioral health issues. Helping her fellow veterans deal with their experiences as soldiers ignited Forkus’ passion for psychology and set her on the path to an academic career devoted to addressing trauma and substance use.

“I started recognizing some of these unmet health needs, particularly the mental health needs,” Forkus said. “And I wanted to give back to the military community in that area, and that's when I pursued more education.

She earned her bachelor’s degree in psychology from Towson University in Maryland, followed by graduate school at the University of Rhode Island, where she completed a master’s in behavioral science and a PhD in clinical psychology, with a focus on trauma and substance use. Afterward, she completed a clinical internship and postdoctoral fellowship at the Medical University of South Carolina, specializing in trauma-focused care and developing investigator-led research.

Forkus describes her research as sitting at the intersection of trauma, substance use, and violence.

“A lot of my past research has been about understanding the relationships between these things,” she said. “How does trauma lead to substance use and violence, and how does substance use lead to more trauma? How are they all interconnected? What are the processes that might make violence and trauma worse?”

Her research seeks to identify how interventions such as self-compassion and emotion regulation can improve outcomes for those affected by trauma and addiction, Forkus said. More recently, she has shifted toward applied research, working directly with veterans and other populations to design interventions based on their lived experiences.

“I’ve been interviewing veterans who had just completed treatment and asking them about this idea of self-compassion and how they think that would have helped their treatment or improved their outcomes,” Forkus said. “And then taking their voices, opinions and experiences and translating them into an intervention.”

Although her personal identity is no longer deeply connected to her military service, Forkus said it plays a crucial role in connecting with the populations she serves. She said her background is a tool that can help her serve a community that tends to be disproportionately affected by a lot of mental health and physical health problems.

“My military service can help validate veterans’ experience, because a lot of veterans feel like ‘You don't understand,’” Forkus said, “But I have that shared sense of identity with them, and it can also help them understand why I'm helping them.”

As a military researcher, she said San Antonio provides many opportunities to build collaborations with the city’s strong military and veteran presence, but she is also focusing on expanding her work to civilian populations—particularly women and individuals experiencing interpersonal or intimate partner violence.

With two young children at home, Forkus also has plenty to keep her busy when she’s not researching or teaching. Her first child was born during the height of the COVID pandemic, and her second during her postdoctoral program.

“I was really adamant that I’m not letting life stop just because I’m in school,” she said. “So I really developed the skills of being able to balance being a mom, and also an academic and a forever learner.”

Forkus said coming back to San Antonio as a researcher and faculty member, with a PhD, two kids and a husband is a full circle moment for her as she remembers the behavioral health training at Fort Sam that first set her on the path that ultimately brought her back here.

“I really liked a lot of the values of military service, like hard work, selfless service, giving back to a community,” Forkus said. “And I feel like that's essentially what my current work is all about - working really hard in order to be able to give back to communities in different ways. And now I'm giving back to those who served in the military.”