Clinically Significant @ Carolina the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
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Clinically Significant @ Carolina The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Volume 5 • 2018 Edition UPDATE FROM THE DIRECTOR Clinical Faculty OF CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY & Staff Updates ello Alumni! I am thrilled to tell you that our program 2 is doing well, and we are all here in Davie Hall thinking of you! As you will see in this Newsletter, we have been Alumni Anniversary very busy helping to make the clinical program even stronger, and offer some examples for other clinical 8 programs to follow. Perhaps most notably, we offered our third Diversifying Clinical Psychology program this year, Transitions led by current students Donte Bernard, Effua Sosoo, H and Jennifer Yi (faculty advisors: David Penn and Erica 11 Wise), which was a terrific success! We are so grateful for your donations which made it possible for us to DCP Weekend offer this event and invite even more minority students 13 from around the country to Chapel Hill to learn about the field and about our program. In fact, our program has been so successful that we have been approached by Recent Awards several other campuses asking for information on how to and Grants organize similar events elsewhere (note: we weren’t the first department to offer this type of event, but we are 15 flattered that we have become a role model for others!). You will also see in this issue that our students continue to be remarkably successful winning national awards, presenting and publishing their research, and receiving competitive grants. Thanks so much to you for your help sending our students to conferences to present their work and meet collaborators. Your contributions have truly made a difference. Last, please accept my thanks for your wonderful support of our students in so many others ways as well. Our graduate students frequently tell me how frequently they run into one of you – a Tar Heel Ph.D. in clinical psychology – who reaches out to offer guidance, support, mentorship, and camaraderie. Our students feel very fortunate to be part of the Carolina family, and I hope you do too! — Mitch Mitch Prinstein, Ph.D., ABPP John Van Seters Distinguished Professor of Psychology Director of Clinical Psychology y Clinical Faculty & Staff Updates Dr. Jon Abramowitz the effects of cognitive-behavioral group of recovery in both female and male I feel extraordinarily therapy for relatives of people with anxiety samples. We also recently completed data lucky and proud to disorders. She is teaching these relatives collection on our Generations Study, where be a faculty member how to reduce their accommodation, we focused on young adult females, their in such a strong how to communicate more effectively mothers, and their maternal grandmothers. Clinical Program! In and assertively, and how to use CBT to With this data, we’re examining self- our lab, my students reduce their own distress over their loved compassion as a buffer of the relation and I are working on one’s problems. This is sure to make between body dissatisfaction and both projects to enhance a big splash in the field when Lillian disordered eating and depression across the treatment of OCD publishes her findings. All of my terrific age cohorts; menopause and disordered and other anxiety related problems. We’ve graduate students (along with the help eating (Katie Thompson’s Master’s thesis); got two “pet” tarantulas in our lab who of a wonderful team of undergraduate and fat talk across mother-daughter dyads serve as fear stimuli helping us learn volunteers) pour their hearts and souls (Ale Miller’s Master’s thesis). This coming about the best ways to deliver exposure into our various studies and continue to spring I’ll teach a new “Integrated First therapy as informed by the inhibitory publish in top journals and present papers Year Seminar” with Sabine Gruffat, a learning model of extinction. We’re also at professional conferences nationally and colleague in the art department -- we will excited that our study comparing routine internationally. Finally, I am enjoying be co-teaching “Visualizing Women’s exposure and response prevention (ERP) collaborating with colleagues in Norway, Lives and Experiences” which will blend to ERP informed from an Acceptance and routinely traveling there to train therapists psychology of women themes with the Commitment Therapy (ACT) perspective in the treatment of OCD. Please visit our digital arts. Service-wise, I continue as the has wrapped up. We’re currently crunching lab’s webpage: co-Director of Diversity Initiatives with the numbers and writing up our findings www.jonabram.web.unc.edu Enrique Neblett; we have a full year of for presentation and publication. We hope activities ahead of us! The last professional you will look for them this year! We’re Dr. Anna piece I’ll mention: I was promoted to full currently evaluating the effectiveness of a Bardone-Cone professor this summer. Life in Chapel Hill smartphone app called WayForward for The Bardone-Cone is good! the treatment of social anxiety. This app Lab is diving into data is based on cognitive-behavioral therapy analysis and manuscript Dr. Don Baucom principles and allows users to contact a preparation from our Our lab’s research “coach” to help them troubleshoot and recently completed continues to focus work through difficult exposure therapy NIH-funded data on couples, both exercises. Last but not least, my graduate collection of individuals basic research and student Lillian Reuman is collecting her with an eating disorder history -- we are treatment studies that dissertation data in a study evaluating excited to be looking at the experiences emphasize couples and psychopathology. This includes the dissemination of our couple-based intervention for depression with the National Health Service throughout England. We also are continuing a couple treatment study in Australia where one partner has insomnia. Our couple treatment for eating disorders, which is now in its 11th year at UNC, is now active in Sweden as well. Postdoctoral and doctoral students in the lab really make these studies work, as well as initiating a variety of thoughtful investigations, including new couple interventions for (a) postpartum depressed women, (b) distressed same sex couples, and (c) HIV at risk couples in South Africa. Their basic research has led to intriguing new findings 2 Faculty Updates (continued) about how individuals use partners to We have been busy writing manuscripts to Dr. Karen Gil regulate negative emotions. So life is very disseminate our findings from two recently Karen Gil taught two good, and these younger colleagues keep completed studies. In the first, we are sections of Health me on my toes and passionate about our examining the neural correlates of monetary Psychology an upper work. If any of you are in the area, please and environmental reward sensitivity among level course for mostly drop by and say hello! opiate users in detoxification (Jennifer Yi). psychology majors. She In the second, we are testing the difference has revised the course to incorporate new Dr. Stacey between cocaine users and healthy controls technologies and techniques that make the Daughters on neural network connectivity during stress course more focused on active learning. We’ve had another (Elizabeth Reese). The lab also had a strong Her research is in the area of stress and productive year in the showing from Julianna Maccarone, Sydney coping with medical illness. BRANE lab! We are Baker, and Deepika Anand presenting our well underway in the findings at the Association for Behavioral Dr. Andrea data collection phase and Cognitive Therapies annual conference. Hussong of our NIDA R01 testing the long-term Our lab members have a number of Andrea Hussong is both effectiveness of our LETS ACT behavioral notable accomplishments from the past a member of the clinical activation (BA) treatment smartphone year. Jennifer Yi was awarded a NIH faculty and the director ‘app’ for depression and substance use, NRSA F31 predoctoral fellowship for her of the Center for the impact of neural correlates of reward study, Working Memory Connectivity and Developmental Science processing on treatment response using Inhibitory Control in Cocaine Use. Elizabeth (CDS). The CDS is an inter-institutional, fMRI, as well as the effect of treatment Reese proposed, and Jennifer Yi and Yun inter-disciplinary advanced study institute on these neural indicators. New studies Chen defended, their Master’s Theses. for training and research in Developmental underway include a clinical trial examining Katie McKay defended her honors thesis Science. As part of the CDS, she directs the effect of brain stimulation using and won the Top Ten Scholar-Athlete an NIH-funded training program for transcranial alternating current stimulation award. Yun Chen and Dr. Deepika Anand postdoctoral and predoctoral students that (tACS) on inhibition and distress tolerance organized a presentation for international span the fields of education, neuroscience, among polysubstance users (Jennifer Yi), students at UNC to reduce stigma about nursing, public health, developmental the translation of our behavioral activation mental illness. psychology and clinical psychology. This treatment for depression into Chinese group engages in consortium training each and the completion of data collection for We are also very excited to welcome first semester focused on a topic of interest, a pilot study examining the feasibility year graduate student Catherine Paquette, such as how parents prepare adolescents and efficacy of this treatment among research specialist and lab manager to navigate an increasingly diverse world. Chinese international students (Yun Julianna Maccarone, research assistants As part of her currently funded research Chen), and a test of the impact of emotion Anna Bensley and Michael Loeffler, and program, she is examining the efficacy of differentiation on substance use treatment to have Katie McKay transition from an online training program to help parents outcomes using ecological momentary an undergraduate to a full-time research cultivate gratitude in their children (with assessment (Dr.