Melissa R. Schick, PhD, assistant professor of psychiatry, has been awarded a Mentored Patient-Oriented Career Development grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse to study early detection and intervention of substance use among trauma-exposed individuals.
Throughout the 5-year funding period, Schick aims to gain mentored training in micro-longitudinal research designs, the use of wearable biosensors for passive data collection, and the influence of autonomic nervous system functioning and psychophysiologic processes on emotional responding.
The majority of U.S. adults (89.7 percent) have experienced at least one traumatic event, and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is common among people seeking treatment for substance use. Disturbances in emotional processing increase risk for substance use and difficulties with emotional responding characterize PTSD.
This grant titled “Leveraging Mobile Technology to Explicate the Role of Emotions in Substance Use Among Trauma-Exposed Community Adults” will combine subjective (i.e., experience sampling methodology) and objective (i.e., physiological indices via biosensor) metrics to explore the role of emotional processes in substance use in the daily lives of trauma-exposed community adults. The amount is $971,548.
Schick is the PI and Tami Sullivan, PhD, professor of psychiatry, is the primary mentor. External mentors are Howard Tennen, PhD (UConn School of Medicine); Bettina Hoeppner, PhD (Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School); Evan Kleiman, PhD (Rutgers University); and Karen Quigley, PhD (Northeastern University)
Schick is a clinical psychologist who came to Yale School of Medicine in 2022 to complete a postdoctoral research fellowship (T32DA019426) within the Yale Department of Psychiatry under the mentorship of Sullivan and Angela Haeny, PhD.