Martha Banks

Banks was a founder of the Society for the Psychological Study of Ethnic Minority Issues, which became the Society for the Psychological Study of Culture, Ethnicity and Race, American Psychological Association (APA), Division 45. She served as President of the Society for the Psychology of Women (APA, Division 35) from 2008 to 2009 and as their Division Representative to the APA Council in 2012. She was the 1997 Chair of the APA Committee on Women, and served on the APA Board for the Advancement of Psychology in the Public Interest.

Biography

Banks was born in Washington D.C in 1951 and grew up in Newport, Rhode Island. As both of her parents were graduates of Brown University, Banks had a very different life when it came to education as compared to other African American girls growing up in the 1960s.

Banks received her B.S. degree at Brown University in 1973. She then attended graduate school at the University of Rhode Island where she obtained a M.A. in 1978 and a PhD in clinical psychology in 1980. Her dissertation was titled "Emotions and Music: A Correlational Study." Banks worked as a psychologist at the Brecksville Veterans Administration Hospital from 1983 to 1996. She was on the faculty of the College of Wooster from 1989 to 1991 and from 2003 to 2005. She also served as a Part-Time Leave Replacement Adjunct Professor at Kent State University from February to May in 2012, where she taught Development of Gender Role & Identity.

Banks's research and clinical work has focused on women with disabilities, including their elevated risk for physical and psychological abuse. Several of her studies have looked specifically at the traumatic brain injuries sustained by victims of domestic violence. With Rosalie Ackerman, Banks developed the Ackerman-Banks Neuropsychological Battery, which was one of the first assessments to include an ethnic minority normative sample, and the Post-Assault Traumatic Brain Injury Interview and Checklist. As a part of Society of Rehabilitation Psychology, Banks advocated for people with visible and invisible disabilities.