I study the connections between environmental stress, (biological and behavioral) stress reactivity, and emotional disorders, such as anxiety, depression, and borderline personality pathology.
A recent line of work focuses on distress tolerance, conceptualized as both an abiding trait and a momentary response to threatening or challenging events. I investigate whether (and how) distress tolerance changes over time, differs from neighboring traits (like experiential avoidance), and predicts risk for emotional problems.
I research the dimensional structure of emotional problems, as inferred from patterns of observed clustering of emotional disorder symptoms. I am part of a research consortium that aims to delineate these dimensions that form the basis of clinical expressions of mental illness. I use these empirically based dimensions to clarify how life stress and stress reactivity processes relate to emotional problems.
From a methodological point of view, I specialize in factor analysis, longitudinal structural equation modeling, clinical interviewing, and ecological momentary assessment to answer these research questions.
