Her poster examined the impact of childhood adversity on disruptions in cognitive functioning and mood disorders that are relevant to treatment outcomes. It was a secondary analysis of depressive symptoms and trajectory over time from middle childhood through late adolescence based on a longitudinal study, and focused on those who experienced childhood maltreatment and whether it’s related to symptom course and attention. Those who did have a history of maltreatment and more inattention had more severe symptoms earlier in the course of disorder and tended to stabilize over time, which is consistent with epidemiological literature that suggests childhood maltreatment has a stronger impact in earlier ages.
Dues are $20/year for faculty and students are requested to contribute what they can. Submit payment online via PayPal, to Lauren's GMail account (see email).
The dues are vital to supporting the Student Poster Award!
3. Upgrading information about Bipolar Disorder on Wiki
We want to raise the visibility of psychology-related work on bipolar disorder, both at the International Society for Bipolar Disorders, and at general psychology and psychiatry conferences.
To that end, here are some links to different meetings (feel free to add). Let's aim to get 2-3 symposia submitted to ABCT in March 2020!
Bipolar SIG breakout session with Co-President Victoria Cosgrove, and Past President Lauren Weinstock, along with some of the new talent entering the field
Bipolar research in the RDoC/mechanism era - strategies for being competitive in today’s funding climate
Most critical questions in child/adolescent mood disorder research
Available career paths in clinical and research realms
Challenges and obstacles to a successful academic/research career
Dr. Cosgrove and Dr. Weinstock’s breakout
Academia is not the only path!
Important to think about how women fit into academia (relatively underrepresented despite more women being in the field of psychology at large)
What kinds of research topics are you interested in?
Yen-ling and Sam - pediatric mood
Yen-ling
Cultural differences + prediction modeling studies and techniques
In 5 years: Go back to Taiwan to teach at a university
Sam
Changing diagnostic trends in BSD, pediatric mood and sleep disorders
In 5 years: Academic medical center or psych dept
Jen
Transdiagnostic examination of impulsivity (experiencing an emotion that immediately triggers action)
How does recruitment, etc change between different settings (AMC, smaller clinics, etc)?
Dr. Weinstock
More severely ill patients in AMC
Suicide in BSD; suicide prevention
Also more recently interested in criminal justice settings and recruiting from the criminal justice system
Greater points of contact with hospitals/infrastructure
Higher base rates of all psychopathology (~40% reported history of mania)
Hannah
Used to work at McClane at 3 East (Boston)
In 5 years: AMC, maybe private practice
Abigail
In 5 years: AMC
What are the challenges you observe in recruitment?
YL + S not actively recruiting BSD participants currently
Easier in AMC than psych dept
J + Dr. C agree that it’s easier in AMC
Dr. C likes the culture of a psych department
Sense of community
Harder to find a niche/crew in AMC
S:
Community outreach to psychiatric inpatient units?
DCFS, state department barriers
J:
Institutional counseling services (CAPS) to identify undergrads is also hard
Dr. W:
Partnerships with community MH can be good for recruitment
Old way: the people doing the clinical trials are not the people who deliver those interventions to the community
Moving in the right direction
Integrating community MH professionals (recruiting the staff in a community)
Dr. C:
Formal practicum experiences are set up like a Bay Area-wide consortium
On-the-ground engagement in communities by students who are also involved in the research
Practicums are very homegrown
Feels like she gets to wear many hats and get a variety of experiences in AMC setting as opposed to in psych depts
Dr. W:
Knew that she did not love classroom teaching (that’s not why she got a PhD!)
Psych dept jobs always involve teaching
AMC also involves teaching but very different (supervision, special topics, no grading papers/exams)
Working in a medical setting allows her to come into contact with the populations she’s interested in
Research, teaching, and service are weighted very differently in AMCs (research is like 90%)
Personally focuses on research
Because there aren’t administrative avenues to cover other efforts in Academia… only getting paid 100% for everything despite putting more than 100% effort
Less flexibility within Brown’s structure specifically
Definitely a tradeoff of priorities
Sam: In an academic medical center where money comes from grants, how do you balance what your research interests are and what is “fundable”?
Dr. W: Can’t invest time in something that she’s not interested in
Have to be invested in the idea for a grant so it actually gets written
Need to be strategic but stay within something that you have a passion or interest for
Gave example of suicide prevention in criminal justice with NIMH
“Highest risk population in the highest risk setting”
Reflects interest in severe psychopathology
A lot of investigators are not comfortable taking those risks (hierarchy, red tape, stressful)
Dr. C: Non-linear path to where she is currently
Dovetails role of being a female in psychology
Part of it is saying yes and also expectations of flexibility
As a junior person, you need to try to stay true to your core
Developing persistence in finding your “oomph”
Not just either research vs clinical career
Definitely involves strategy to strike the right balance for your personal interests
J: Especially in AMCs, there are challenges with pulls on your time, setting boundaries for when to say no. What do you wish you had known?
Dr. C: Personally drawn towards people (esp women) who serve as models
Used to be drawn towards big names but now drawn more towards big hearts
Working and mentoring helps her stay young and stay involved socially
Dr. W
Saying no more now because she can, but saying yes definitely served her well in the past (especially for women)
Once you’re around long enough, you develop the currency to say no to things
Hard to say no to ~buttery~ requests but it’s easier when she knows she’s where she’s where she wants to be without them
Engaged in a lot because so much sounded fun and interesting
The people she enjoyed spending time with are now her collaborators and her professional network
Sometimes you don’t realize you’re developing that network from your peers when you’re focused on just the senior people
J: Question about future of being a bipolar research, a lot of stuff is transdiagnostic. What are your thoughts on where the field is moving?
Dr. W: If you stick it out long enough, the trend shifts
Priorities and “hot areas” come and go because science evolves and changes over time
Ride out the waves
Mechanisms, computational modeling, etc have the long-term payoff but do not necessarily address immediate, short-term needs
Services realm is more short-term
Dr. Jarrod Leffler's Breakout Group
Rachel Vaughn-Coaxum
Postdoc at University of Pittsbhurgh working with Dr. Tina Goldstein
Research interests: EBA, psychosocial treatments and how childhood adversity plays a part
Healthy habits help and triggers
Childhood trauma
Warren
Grad student with Ana van meter
Research Interests: Web-based interventions utilized for access in adolescence
Marina
Postbac with Andy
Massachusetts General Hospital
Has done research with:
Fitbit and online behavior therapy with participants that have Cardiovascular disease and mental illness
They saw higher retention but a lower startup
Involved in gene research that includes 4 sites are conducting similar in genes to Jarrod's
Josh Langfus
Grad student with Eric Youngstrom
Research Interests Sleep and irritability
Evidenced-based assessment (EBA) and dissemination of EBA tools
Caroline Vincent
Undergrad in Dr. Youngstrom's lab
HGAPS member
Jarrod M. Leffler, Ph.D., L.P.
Interested in accurate family-based treatment
Uses MFPEP, IFPEP
Has done research with people in outpatient clinics.
Conducted research at Mayo
A 2-week family-based elements of MFPEP and elements of DBT
Does work with gene mapping with Gwas
Early research has been inconclusive
Has done work with the Gene Psyc swab test
It looks at how you metabolize meds
It uses a stoplight system
Green can take
Yellow caution when taking or consider not taking
Red do not take
It is not reliable. Often patients have been on medication and done well when the system says they shouldn't
Further questions and limitations: Patient makeup and People taking multiple meds
Problems: Pristic is not put through proper channels and is just viewed as safe
Looked at decision making based on Genpsyc test
Involved with a project that is similar to Amy West’s rainbow project
Looks at Dni and how it applies to bp
MFPEP, DBT, and ACT
4 groups have IPT content
Questions and further directions:
What does it look like in the literature?
Outcome studies are the next direction.
General discussion
Interested in the dissemination of treatment.
Thinks about to load on therapists to learn new information a treatment practices
Can we make it manageable?
Can we get therapists to do it?
How to handle missing sessions of MFPEP?
How to balance the integrity and the flexibility of treatment?
Assessment
Looked at the Phq9 compared to scales with normative data to give more information
Working on creating clinical significance benchmarks for psychological measures
Technology
Anxiety coach an app
Amod app
Cogeto
Analyzes voice emotion
Social media
Needs to be more private
How to and who would vet info
It does provide connective care
It could be used to help in addition to care or while waiting for an appointment
Machine learning and AI may be a possible solution to technology-based treatment
Need training data
NLP to classify and help understand
But stakes are high
Passive monitoring may be helpful
Risk calculator tries to do this using information from habits
attempts to Predict the onset of next episode
Passive monitoring
What is the passive monitoring picking up and what of it is useful
Overfitting could be a problem
Dr. West's breakout
Questions re: specialization & finding mentors (i.e., grad school) who do EXACTLY what you're interested in
Intersectionality is possible!
Choose someone who does one of the many things you're interested in & carve a space for yourself
How can you integrate more research into your career when you primarily focus on clinical work (especially when you're early in your career)?
Working in academic medicine can promote a balance
Downsides: there aren't hard lines of money in academic medicine
Starting out in this career, it can be hard to carve out research time
Getting your own funding is the most direct way to carve out more time
K or early career awards
Being very early in your career makes it tougher to carve out time
You get told to say "yes" to everything, but you have to shift to being your own boss
Protect some time to work on grants with others
May give you the space and time to write your own grants
Careers in academic medicine
PROS:
You don't have to teach, if that's not something you're interested in
Merges clinical work and research
You can do clinical work that informs your research, and research that informs your clinical work
Opportunities to work with many different people, perspectives, and research questions
Very interdisciplinary
CHALLENGES:
"Soft" money
...BUT you can do things like take leadership or administrative positions so that some of your salary is covered by non-research endeavors
Dr. West works at Children's Hospital Los Angeles
Her K was based on developing a treatment for pediatric bipolar disorder (the RAINBOW Program)
The ability to integrate clinical work and research is Dr. West's favorite part of academic medicine
She currently is working on a postpartum study and PCORI funding (speaks to interdisciplinary nature of academic medicine)
How do you get experience in different environments during your graduate/early career training?
Pay attention to practicum/externship options when you're applying to graduate schools
There are more options than you think
Some will have options for academic medical settings, community clinics, etc.
Some will only have options for internal sites
Some will require to you apply out to different clinics or practices to get your experience
Can you be involved in medical (i.e., psychiatry, medicine) research as a Ph.D.?
Yes!
Join a team of psychiatrists AND psychologists
Is psychosocial treatment research dead?
No!
...BUT successfully funded lines of investigation are more about mechanisms of treatment response, and include looking at biomarkers (e.g., inflammatory response) as a component
Know what's getting funded and figure out ways of marrying this with your interests and goals
Other career options and advice for psychologists
Boundless opportunities!
Technology companies (e.g., Google, Apple) may hire psychologists for full time or consultant positions
You usually need to be license eligible for academic medical positions, so make sure you're considering this when you apply
Started 7 years ago to bring together people who have an interest in bipolar by Eric Youngstrom and Sheri Johnson
There’s also a listserv! We're getting everyone added
