Kathryn Thomas, PhD, JD, instructor of psychiatry and core faculty at the SEICHE Center for Health and Justice, has been chosen to receive a 2025 Yale Center for Clinical Investigation (YCCI) Scholar Award.
The 24-month award is intended to assist Thomas in developing her career as a clinical/translational scientist through salary support, protected time to conduct research, assistance in preparing data for publication and grant applications, and help in beginning to establish an independent research program. She will additionally participate in local YCCI educational events, including Yale-Rockefeller Day, Robert S. Sherwin All Scholar Day, and the Janeway Society Annual Retreat.
For her funded research, Thomas will first work to characterize experiences of posttraumatic stress and moral injury across the lifespan in formerly incarcerated people. She will then adapt an evidence-based intervention for PTSD and moral injury, originally designed to treat military trauma, to meet the specific treatment needs of people returning home from incarceration.
Thomas completed the Yale Doctoral Internship in Clinical and Community Psychology and a postdoctoral research fellowship at the Justice Collaboratory at Yale Law School and the SEICHE Center for Health and Justice at Yale School of Medicine. She is a licensed psychologist and attorney, and conducts clinical and forensic evaluations and provides evidence-based treatment to people who are currently and formerly incarcerated.
She also serves as a consulting psychologist in several clinics at Yale Law School, including the Challenging Mass Incarceration Clinic, Mental Health Justice Clinic, and Criminal Justice Clinic.
Her research focuses on understanding health disparities and promoting health equity for individuals impacted by the criminal legal system. The goal of this research is to apply a scientific approach to understanding the influence of laws and policies related to the criminal legal system on health and mental health outcomes in justice-involved individuals, and, ultimately, to apply these findings to develop evidence-based mental health treatments to reduce mental health disparities for individuals and communities disproportionately impacted by mass incarceration. She is passionate about utilizing community-engaged research approaches and working alongside people with lived experienced of incarceration at each stage of the research process.