The primary goal of our research is to help people relieve their suffering and reach their life goals. Our main focus lies in determining the optimal psychological interventions to treat individuals with anxiety and related disorders, including depression and OCD. We believe that we can improve our treatments by understanding the psychological mechanisms involved in the maintenance and treatment of anxiety and depression. To this end, we are interested in examining the cognitive, behavioral, and affective aspects of the depression, anxiety and related disorders, how comorbidity influences them, and the therapist and patient contributions to outcome.
More specifically, we are developing a multilevel research strategy examining factors related to the maintenance and treatment of depression and anxiety disorders including panic disorder, social anxiety, general anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorder, and other anxiety disorders. Overall, our general approach to research is to be theory-driven, integrative, and empirical. We believe strongly that most issues in clinical psychology should be examined through the scientific method using clinical intuition, and that integrating findings from disparate areas of psychology to come up with novel hypotheses will help advance knowledge. We plan on continuing to use this philosophy in order to continue our lines of research in mechanisms and treatment outcomes for anxiety disorders and depression.