Laurence Sugarman - Featured Faculty 2017
Laurence Sugarman
College of Health Sciences and Technology
Laurence Sugarman traveled an unusual route to academia. He started as a hospital laboratory technician, completed physician assistant instruction, earned his M.D. magna cum laude from University of Missouri-Columbia, trained in pediatrics at the University of Rochester, then established a pediatric community practice. Insisting primary care is primary mental health care, his was the first local pediatric practice to share clients with a group of clinical psychologists onsite. During 30 years of clinical practice, Dr. Sugarman’s promotion of person-centered strategies to foster self-regulation with medical therapy garnered recognition. While teaching worldwide, Dr. Sugar- man produced an awarding-winning documentary, Hypnosis in Pediatric Practice, then co-authored and edited, with William Wester, Therapeutic Hypnosis with Children and Adolescents.
In 2011, President Destler tasked Sugarman to develop an intervention to help RIT students self-regulate stress. Funded by the Flutie and Golisano Foundations, the ensuing “Minding Anxiety Project” (MAP) demonstrated the feasibility of student-tailored autonomic biofeedback training. MAP students reported signi cant improvement and satisfaction with acquired stress management skills.
Since then, Sugarman has contributed award-winning papers and guest-edited professional journals in an effort establish more empiric biological bases for clinical hypnosis and provide innovative professional pedagogy and training in its use. This content extends to his undergraduate CHST Biomedical Science courses, “Applied Psychophysiology” and “Placebos, Research, Suggestion and Health.”
Sugarman’s interest in self-regulation is helping youth with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Observing both autonomic diversity and benefit from autonomic biofeedback training in youth with ASD, Sugarman has posited autonomic dysregulation as ASD’s core, unifying impairment. With colleague Stephen Jacobs (MAGIC), he has led efforts to create and pilot (1) an algorithm and method for dynamically tuning biofeedback channels to the strengths of the user and (2) novel ASD-directed graphical user interfaces for biofeedback training.
Collaborating with RIT’s MAGIC and St. John Fisher College’s Wegmans School of Nursing, Sugarman is developing and testing two mobile health apps. A tracking app augments therapy for youth with anxiety and ASD. Another aims to relieve chronic pain and improve well-being with user-directed hypnosis skills.
Taken together, this work reflects Sugarman’s larger commitment to drive the current allopathic, reactive model of health care–rife with epidemic substance abuse, increasing expense and decreasing access–towards a more integrative, person-centered and cost-effective paradigm.
Laurence Sugarman
Program Researcher
RIT College of Health Sciences and Technology