Suzette A. Boon PhD, 1949, is a clinical psychologist and psychotherapist. She has more than thirty years of experience working in mental health institutions. She is a trainer and supervisor for the Dutch Society for Family Therapy and the Dutch Society for Hypnosis. Since the late eighties, she has specialized in the diagnosis and treatment of complex dissociative disorders. She has worked as a researcher at the Free University of Amsterdam (Psychiatric Department). She translated and validated the Dutch version of the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV Dissociative Disorders (SCID-D) and received a PhD for her thesis Multiple Personality Disorder in the Netherlands in 1993. She has published several books, book chapters and many articles on both the diagnosis and treatment of dissociative disorders.
Suzette Boon is working in a private practice, mainly as a trainer and supervisor. She has been giving workshops all over Europe and the USA on topics related to complex trauma and dissociation.
She has developed a skills training manual for patients with a complex dissociative disorder and currently has eight years of experience using this manual in structured groups in the Netherlands. In addition, she has been supervising projects in Norway and Finland using this manual. Its English version (with Kathy Steele, MN, CS and Onno van der Hart, PhD) was published in March 2011 by Norton publishers. Translations have been published in Finnish, Swedish, Dutch, German, Norwegian, French, Italian, Spanish and Polish.
She is currently doing research with a new diagnostic interview to assess chronic trauma-related disorders, in particular the dissociative disorders – the Trauma and Dissociation Symptoms Interview (TADS-I). This new instrument that follows an earlier version (IDDTS, 2006) has been introduced in several European countries. The interview will be published in 2023 as part of a new book: Assessment of Trauma-Related Dissociation (Boon, 2023) by Norton Publishers. The Dutch book has been published in 2022.
Suzette Boon is co-founder of the European Society for Trauma and Dissociation (ESTD) and was the first president of this Society. She organized the first conference of the ESTD in Amsterdam in 2008. She was co-organizer of the second ESTD conference in April 2010 in Belfast, of the third ESTD conference in March 2012 in Berlin and the fourth ESTD conference ESTD conference in Amsterdam in 2016.
The International Society for the Study of Dissociation (ISSD) granted her the David Caul Memorial Award in 1993, the Morton Prince Award in 1994 and the President’s Award of Distinction and the status of Fellow in 1995 for her contributions to the diagnosis, treatment, research and education in the field of dissociative disorders. In 2009, she received the Life Time Achievement Award, and in 2011 the Pierre Janet writing Award for the book Coping with Trauma-Related Dissociation a Skills Training for Patients and their Therapists.