Professor Rachel Dekel's team's research focuses on coping and adjustment following traumatic events and their implications for the survivor, family, therapist and community.  The basis of our approach is an ecological view of trauma and resilience.  We believe that individual differences in post-traumatic response and recovery are the result of complex interactions among individual, situational, and environmental factors.  These interrelations can define and foster or impede the person's recovery.  We also view the environment as being rich in resources that facilitate and promote recovery.  Individuals are part of a wide ecological system that affects and that is affected by the circles surrounding them.

Professor Dekel is a member of an interdisciplinary team of eight scholars from five universities in Israel which recently received funding of 35 million shekels from I-CORE (Israeli Centers of Research Excellence) to set up The Research Center for Mass Trauma. The Center deals with an interdisciplinary understanding of traumatic events, creating collaborations between the humanities and the life sciences in academic institutions in Israel and abroad. In this Center, Professor Dekel focuses on families' capacities to cope with traumatic circumstances and the development and evaluation of evidence-based interventions for couples in which one member suffers from PTSD.