Draft:Constance Scharff (mental health researcher)

Constance Scharff (born 1972) is an American mental health researcher noted for her research to improve treatment outcomes for those experiencing addiction and trauma. . She researches the efficacy of complementary mental health practices as well as the interplay between climate change and trauma in indigenous communities.

Education
Scharff completed her undergraduate work at St. Lawrence University, where she graduated magna cum laude with a BA in Government and minors in Asian Studies and African Studies. While an undergraduate, she studied and conducted research in India, Kenya, Tanzania, and El Salvador, cementing her interest in practices that uplift human experience and promote wellbeing worldwide. Later, she earned an MA and PhD at the California Institute for Integral Studies, where she began to integrate ideas around addiction treatment with complementary and indigenous mental health practice. While in graduate school, she studied with noted consciousness studies scholar Allan Combs and anthropologist and creative therapist Bradford Keeney. Her dissertation reframes alcoholism as an opportunity for personal growth and transformation. She suggests that by radically revising internal narratives, we can shift our lived experience and recover from many mental health issues. In 2019, St. Lawrence University honored Dr. Scharff with the Sol Feinstone Humanitarian Award.

Exploration and medical anthropology
Fascinated by varieties of mystical experience and religious practice, Scharff has made it a point to join in and lead expeditions to remote areas to meet with traditional healers the world over. She is particularly interested in medical anthropology and consciousness studies as a means of understanding non-Western approaches to mental health and wellbeing, and using field research into indigenous and complementary mental health practices to help governments and nongovernmental organizations invest in and support indigenous mental health activities, particularly when efficacy can be proven.

Research and professional associations
Scharff served the Cliffside Malibu addiction treatment facility as Senior Addiction Research Fellow and Director of Addiction Research for five years, from 2012 - 2017. She was one of the professionals who showed the clinical efficacy of using complementary therapies in addition to psychotherapy in addiction treatment programs. During her tenure at Cliffside Malibu, she co-authored with Cliffside Malibu founder and then CEO Richard Taite, the Amazon bestselling book, Ending Addiction for Good. Part of her research duties included traveling globally to learn about complementary therapies for the treatment of addiction and trauma. During this period, she continued interacting with indigenous groups worldwide, learning about non-Western approaches to mental health and the integration of community support and ritual in promoting wellbeing.

After her departure from Cliffside Malibu, she founded the Institute for Complementary and Indigenous Mental Health Research. As principal investigator, she and her research team travel to remote areas to help indigenous populations address the effects of climate change on mental health. The Institute’s goal is to promote complementary and indigenous practices as important and viable means of improving mental health and wellbeing globally.

Scharff is known for research into the synergy created when a host of complementary practices are used together to treat addiction and trauma. Her experience with music as a therapeutic tool is documented in the book, Rock to Recovery: Music as a Catalyst for Human Transformation. She has also worked with veterans using the arts at the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles and as part of Rock to Recovery with the Air Force Wounded Warrior (AFW2) program

Scharff’s research centers around using complementary health and contemplative practices to improve mental health treatment outcomes. She is a passionate advocate for decolonizing mental healthcare and incorporating indigenous practices and ontologies into healthcare services, as well as radical social transformation to lessen the impacts of climate change.

Scharff is a founding member of the Society for Consciousness Studies and a lifetime member of the World Federation for Mental Health. She’s also a member of several professional associations in psychology. In recognition of her commitment to exploration and inquiry into global indigenous mental health practices, she has gained membership in The Explorers Club.

Family relationships
Scharff is a cousin of the artist, musician, and folklorist Art Rosenbaum and great-great granddaughter of businessman and philanthropist Harris Newmark.

Books
Scharff  writes nonfiction under her secular name. For fiction and poetry, she publishes under her Hebrew name, Ahuva Batya.

Taite, Richard & Scharff, Constance. (November 2012). Ending addiction for good: The groundbreaking, holistic, evidence-based way to transform your life. Tucson, AZ: Wheatmark.

Scharff, Ahuva Batya. (2014). Meeting God at midnight. Austin, TX: Sociosights Press.

Geer, Wes & Scharff, Constance. (July 2021). Rock to Recovery: Music as a Catalyst for Human Transformation. Woodland Hills, CA: Around the Way. (Nonfiction Book Award Gold Winner and National Indie Excellence Award Winner )

Scharff, Ahuva Batya. (October 2023). The Path to God’s Promise. London: Austin Macauley Publishers