Feeling lost looking for labs...

[foremma]

Hey everyone-

I am looking to study self-identity, self-perception, and how it mediates mental illness. I am further interested in how people perceive their illness, in addition to self-stigma.

I have been researching for a couple weeks and am having a hard time finding American psychologists that study these in a clinical program.

Furthermore, I am having a hard time figuring out what researchers are doing independent research vs. actually having a lab that accepts graduate students. I believe the distinction is made when graduate sites list research/faculty vs. when they don't, but I'm not sure. I have had luck finding some researchers at certain universities, but their names are NOT listed under faculty in the graduate school, so I assume they are out, then.

Can anyone guide me to anyone they know that researches these things? I have spent lots of time on PsycInfo, but figured this could only help! What I have been doing is using PsycInfo and Google Scholar to look for papers I am interested in, then google the researchers, and try to trace them back to a university, and ultimately, see if they are on the faculty for a Clinical PhD program AND are still researching what I'm interested in. Am I missing something?

Also, possibly most importantly, I have found that a majority of the researchers are in a social program. How do I contact them/the university asking if I could complete a Clinical PhD doing "social" research? I know what I want to do can be translated into a clinical sense, but the program is housed in a social domain.

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[WisNeuro]

The thing is, you won't find a clinical researcher who is doing exactly what you want to do. But that is probably a good thing. You may need to find a clinical psych program that also has a social/personality department so that you can consult for research, with kind of a secondary mentor. In the clinical arena, you should find an area that you are interested (depression, anxiety, trauma, etc). That way you can do self-perception and stigma research on that population.

Long story short, you don't need to match up 100% with your advisor, and it's actually good that you don't. Otherwise you're just replicating research instead of starting your unique line of research. For example, I did trauma and neuropsychology research with my advisor, who was primarily affective neuroscience (mainly depression when I started working with her). Our overlap was in the methods that we were interested in (imaging, EEG) and neuro.

 

[EmotRegulation]

Also, there are certainly programs in which the experimental (read: social) faculty will mentor clinical students. One of my friends did this. In fact, same goes for Psychiatry....sometimes faculty in Psychiatry departments can mentor students in the Psychology program. You'd still take courses with the psychology folks, in the clinical program, but your research would be with your mentor in another department/area. To find these people, you could look for social folks where there is also a clinical program and ask if they ever mentor clinical students.

 

[foremma]

Also, there are certainly programs in which the experimental (read: social) faculty will mentor clinical students. One of my friends did this. In fact, same goes for Psychiatry....sometimes faculty in Psychiatry departments can mentor students in the Psychology program. You'd still take courses with the psychology folks, in the clinical program, but your research would be with your mentor in another department/area. To find these people, you could look for social folks where there is also a clinical program and ask if they ever mentor clinical students.

Thanks for the reply. Are you aware of how your friend went about this? Did they contact the PI in the summer and ask, simply, if they would consider taking a student interested in a Clinical PhD even though they were in different programs? And did they include info about themselves and their interest, things like that?

The thing is, you won't find a clinical researcher who is doing exactly what you want to do. But that is probably a good thing. You may need to find a clinical psych program that also has a social/personality department so that you can consult for research, with kind of a secondary mentor. In the clinical arena, you should find an area that you are interested (depression, anxiety, trauma, etc). That way you can do self-perception and stigma research on that population.

Long story short, you don't need to match up 100% with your advisor, and it's actually good that you don't. Otherwise you're just replicating research instead of starting your unique line of research. For example, I did trauma and neuropsychology research with my advisor, who was primarily affective neuroscience (mainly depression when I started working with her). Our overlap was in the methods that we were interested in (imaging, EEG) and neuro.

This was very helpful. Would you think that researchers studying depression/anxiety/trauma, in really any context, would be interested in taking on a student like me?

 

[WisNeuro]

This was very helpful. Would you think that researchers studying depression/anxiety/trauma, in really any context, would be interested in taking on a student like me?

Kind of depends, you'd have to be able to tie your interests into theirs in some way. You have to be able to tell a compelling story in your letters of interest and interviews.

 

[foremma]

Kind of depends, you'd have to be able to tie your interests into theirs in some way. You have to be able to tell a compelling story in your letters of interest and interviews.

I am confident I will be able to do that. In terms of what I should be doing now, should I be e-mailing them to see if they are accepting students, and expressing interest?

 

[PsyDr]

What you're looking for is "Rehabilitation Psychology", which emphasizes the interactions between social constructs such as "Disability" and psychology. They remain license eligible clinical psychologists,.

You'd probably be better served using terms like "psychiatric rehabilitation", "clubhouse model", "rehabilitation psychology", "Division 22", "participant restriction", whatever.

You might run into some problems because the world health organization has redefined all this stuff, and has emphasized the effects of stimga on societies and broken it down further.


Alternately you could look at body dysmorphic disorder, total callosotomy,

Or you could just ask T4C.