Mentoring in Youth Suicide Research

Abstract I am a clinical psychologist at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and an Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School. I also serve as Director of Suicide Research in the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at MGH. The long-term goal of my research is to clarify risk processes and mechanisms underlying the onset and recurrence of self-injurious thoughts and behaviors and depression in youth and young adults, with a particular focus on state-sensitive and temporally delimited phenomena that may underlie short-term risk for these outcomes. Through this work, I aim to advance our understanding from who is at risk to how and when they are at risk for these clinical outcomes, thereby ultimately to improve preventive intervention strategies for high-risk youth and young adult populations. I aim to pursue these goals and objectives directly through my own patient-oriented research (POR) and more broadly through mentoring early career investigators in clinical and translational research. I am currently PI on 2 R01-level grants and an MPI on another R01 and an R21, all supported by the NIH and involving complementary evaluations of how stress-related processes place vulnerable adolescents at heightened short-term risk for suicidal outcomes. In addition to my own research, I currently serve on the training committee of the clinical psychology internship program at MGH, as well as three T32 training programs within the Harvard system focused on suicide, youth mental health, and clinical neuroscience. I have mentored 40 trainees thus far across all career stages, from high school students to early career faculty (including 3 K23 awardees and 1 R01 awardee), in POR. The K24 award will provide me with protected time (30%) to expand my mentorship activities with trainees pursuing careers in POR. It will also allow for protected time (20%) to continuing and extending my POR, particularly with a focus on stress processes in social media exchanges, as well as to acquire fundamental skills in natural language processing to further this aim in my own work as well as that of my future mentees. Training opportunities will occur primarily within the context of one of my active R01s (MH124899), with additional data pooled from my current RF1 (MH120830). Both these grants involve ambulatory assessments of short-term risk for suicidal thoughts and behaviors among adolescent psychiatric inpatients in the first month after discharge, a period of particularly elevated risk for these outcomes. My recently completed R01 project, ongoing NIH-supported research, and proposed new research within this K24 will provide mentorship opportunities focused on POR with suicide and related outcomes. Finally, the K24 would provide me with training opportunities further developing my mentorship and leadership skills to benefit future mentees in POR.