A variety of factors contribute to risk for bipolar spectrum disorders, which are associated with significant burdens to personal and public health. This dissertation is designed to integrate multiple risk factors using statistical methods to create profiles of risk and evaluate these profiles’ utility for predicting bipolar symptoms. By determining how risk factors can be most usefully combined, individuals most at risk can be identified so that interventions can be delivered earlier, which can significantly improve long-term outcomes.

Despite the prevalence of self-harm among youth, clinicians often receive limited training in its assessment. Graduate training represents a critical window to build competencies. The purpose of this dissertation is to develop and pilot-test a stakeholder-informed assessment training for graduate psychology trainees using participatory co-design. Study 1 will use qualitative interviews to identify needs and barriers. Study 2 will involve co-design workshops to develop the curriculum. Study 3 will evaluate feasibility, acceptability, and changes in trainee self-efficacy, attitudes, and anxiety.

The purpose of this project is to develop and test an integrated framework of intrapersonal and interpersonal emotion regulation among adolescents with varying levels of anxiety. The proposed novel 10-day, online, intensive longitudinal design will capture near real-time emotional and regulatory experiences across key relationships in adolescents’ increasingly complex social worlds. Advanced analytic approaches will delineate dynamic patterns of intrapersonal and interpersonal emotion regulation across levels of anxiety, with the goal of clarifying early pathways of risk and informing personalized interventions for a leading mental health concern in adolescence.

Parent-child conflict has been identified as a risk factor for adolescent psychopathology. Mentalization, or mental state understanding, is central to navigating conflict interactions but challenging to operationalize. This dissertation integrates clinical theory with social cognition methodologies. Using a video-mediated recall paradigm, this study will investigate empathic accuracy in mother-adolescent dyads as a moment-to-moment manifestation of mentalization. This research will increase knowledge of how understanding and misunderstanding unfold in real time, and pinpoint dyadic empathic accuracy as a promising intervention target.