Dr. Dave Ziegler is many things but perhaps most importantly a model for others related to health in mind, body and spirit. He is a health psychologist, author, trainer, runner, consultant, former foster parent for hundreds of foster children, international lecturer, expert witness in court, and has developed dozens of practical mental health intervention programs over his 50+ year professional career. Dr. Ziegler has mostly maintained a low profile and has preferred to have his actions speak for themselves rather than pursuing media attention.

He finished his bachelor’s degree at Arizona State University and then completed a national model practitioners master’s degree also at Arizona State with an emphasis on marriage and family therapy, considered one of the top programs in the country. He then was a practicing therapist with an emphasis on families and young people for 25 years before going back to graduate school for a doctorate in Counseling Psychology at the University of Oregon. He has multiple professional credentials including being a licensed psychologist, a national board-certified counselor, a licensed professional counselor and licensed marriage and family therapist. He recently completed a six-year term as a Governor’s appointment to the Oregon Board of Psychologist where he was the Board Chair.

But Dave would be the first to say that despite being fortunate in having the best of educational training, his real education came from living with seriously emotionally disturbed children for decades. Of the many programs he started over the last five decades, perhaps the most impressive has been the psychiatric residential treatment center in the mountains of Oregon. Here Dave and his wife of 50+ years along with their professional partner founded and operated a treatment center for four decades where they lived and worked with the most violent and challenging children in the system of care. During these decades thousands of abused, traumatized, angry and violent young children from around the United States and a significant number of foreign-born adopted children came to heal and grow in the beautiful foothills of Oregon’s Cascade Mountains. Outcome data reflected the consistent results that most of the children healed from trauma, improved their ability to bond and attach with adults, and went on to positive lives. This treatment of the most difficult children was proven effective on an unprecedented level. Because of this the program became internationally known with many experts calling it the top treatment center for young traumatized children in the world. Dave credits these children as his best instructors who taught him how to resolve trauma through positive brain repair outlined in Dave’s model of Neurological Reparative Therapy.

Dave realized only a small portion of the children and families needing his innovative treatment would be able to receive it in person. Therefore, he chronicled all he learned in his ten published books and hundreds of articles all with the focus on direct and practical approaches to the most difficult problems. The children helped Dave to become an expert on many complex topics such as: how the brain is damaged and can be repaired, sexual trauma, violent behavior, self-harm, and parenting and treating the most difficult young people. His books reflect the themes and approaches he learned from the children.

• Raising Children Who Refused to be Raised, Parenting Skills and
• Therapeutic Interventions for the Most Difficult Children (2000)
• Achieving Success With Impossible Children: How to Win the Battle of Wills (2005)
• Childhood Stories of Healing and Courage (2017)
• Traumatic Experience and the Brain, a Handbook for
• Understanding and Treating Those Who Where Traumatized as Children, Second Edition (2011)
• Neurological Reparative Therapy, a Roadmap to Healing, Resiliency and Well-being (2011)
• Mental Health Treatment for Children: What Works and Why (2018)
• Attachment, The Social Foundation of a Successful Life (2014)
• Sexual Issues with Children, Promoting Healthy Rather than Unhealthy Behavior (2015)
• Self-Harm, When Abused Becomes an Inside Job (2016)
• Beyond Healing: the Path to Personal Contentment after Trauma (2009)

In his 40 years of public speaking and training professionals and parents, Dr. Ziegler has work in most American states as well as Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Iceland, and Great Brittain. He is regarded as an expert who can put complex concepts into understandable and practical approaches. Having retired from clinical practice and professional presentations, Dave lives on a mountainside in the lush forest of Oregon.