Current Projects

Personalized Processes in Borderline Personality

This project looks at borderline personality pathology as a dysregulated dynamical system, and uses complex dynamics to make short-term and long-term behavioral predictions. In a sample of individuals with high BPD features, this study will look at the patterns of change in momentary symptoms using idiographic, time-varying dynamic models with the objective of identifying early warning signals that manifest right before the system tips into a state of high risk.

NSSI in Youth

The NSSI in Youth project aims to map the person-specific pathways to non-suicidal self-injury. We are currently recruiting children and adolescents with a history of NSSI in the past month and following them for 140 days. Using idiographic symptom networks with nonlinear and time-varying parameters, this project will look at the interactions between proximal risk factors and momentary symptom expression. This study is funded by the American Psychological Foundation Lizzette Peterson Injury prevention grant.

Indiana Black Youth Suicide Prevention Study

The Indiana Black Youth Suicide Prevention Study is a multisite study being conducted in collaboration with Indiana University School of Medicine. This study is a ground-zero investigation of the risk factors of suicide and barriers to help-seeking among Black youth in Indiana. Based on what we learn, we will create a set of recommendations for how to better prevent and respond to mental health crises. The end goal is to build a statewide plan that supports Black youth before a crisis happens.

Affect Variability in Brazil High Risk Cohort

This project is in collaboration with Dr. Marcelo Branas and colleagues at the Brazilian High Risk Cohort Study for childhood Psychiatric Disorders. We will use EMA data from a sample of adolescents and use dynamical systems analysis to infer empirical metrics of affect regulation and resilience (e.g., speed of return to person-specific equilibrium). Our goal is to investigate if these empirical metrics of affect regulation are predictive of long-term clinical outcomes in adolescents.