About Me
I am the
director of the clinical psychology graduate program and have a background in
both clinical and social psychology.
I did my undergraduate and graduate work at Tel Aviv University, Israel
(with Prof. Arie Kruglanski), and my post-doctoral work at Harvard (with Prof.
Robert Rosenthal). My three
interrelated areas are psychotherapy research, family psychology, and health
psychology. I am especially
interested in the process of problem maintenance and change within its familial
(e.g., couple) context. I work
closely with my husband and colleague, Michael
Rohrbaugh, and our Family Research Lab is
involved in the investigation of couple- and family-level therapies, testing
theories that predict who should benefit from what type of intervention (e.g.,
couple-level treatments for smoking and drinking problems). While the question of "how couples
and families change" has important clinical implications, I find the
question of "how couples and families work" no less interesting. In one current project, we are
identifying couple-relationship factors that predict adaptation and survival
among men and women with congestive heart failure; and in another we focus on couple processes that contribute
to continued cigarette smoking by people at risk for heart disease. In our most recent study we examine
moderators and mediators of family therapy for adolescent drug abuse.
Areas
of interest
Psychotherapy
research, families and health, addictive and other health-compromising behavior
and its treatment, graduate education in psychological clinical science.