Below are descriptions of
projects we have ongoing. Prof. Lorenzo-Luaces is the PI or co-PI
for the projects below, unless otherwise noted. For all projects we
take special interest in individual differences
COMET (Indiana University Students)
Indiana University Research Study #10016
The Study of Affective Disorders’ Classification And Treatment Lab
invites you to take part in COMET,
an online wellness activity for college students.
Benefits of participating include:
- Learning skills that may help to improve your mood and
well-being.
If you participate, you will be asked to:
- Complete an online program (lasting about 60-80 minutes) to improve
your mood and well-being. You will either receive it immediately or
after 2 months.
- Answer 3 short surveys (2, 4, and 8 weeks from now), lasting about
10-15 minutes, about the program and your well-being.
The information obtained during this study will be kept strictly
confidential. Only the researchers will have access to the information
you provide. You also have the opportunity to earn up to $15 for
your participation.
If you have questions or concerns regarding your participation in
this research study or about your rights as a research subject, you may
contact lolorenz@indiana.edu
You can read the consent form to decide if you want to
participate in the study by scanning the following QR code:
Other low-intensity treatments
Psychological interventions are effective treatments for depression,
anxiety, stress, insomnia, and other common mental health concerns.
Despite this, it is very difficult for most people to access treatments
because they are expensive, time-consuming, and difficult to find. We
have several projects studying interventions that are not as expensive
as face-to-face psychotherapy with trained therapists, including
internet apps and books. The projects include:
- Leveraging computational social sciences and natural language
processing to optimize engagement and response to low-intensity CBT for
depression and anxiety
- Feasibility of stepped care with single-session interventions and
guided self-help CBT
- Psychologists’ use of waiting lists and willingness to use
low-intensity treatments (PI: Peipert)
- Barriers to internet-based CBT use (PI: Peipert)
- Racial-ethnic diversity in trials of internet-based
cognitive-behavioral therapy (PI: De Jesús-Romero)
- Willingness of individuals to use different low-intensity treatments
(PI: De Jesús-Romero)
- Predictors of engagement with guided self-help (PI: Starvaggi)
Emotion regulation
One commonality of depression, anxiety, stress, insomnia, and other
common mental health concerns may be that people have a hard time
regulating their emotions, especially negative emotions. When we conduct
studies, we usually include measures of emotion regulation, usually the
Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (Gross and John, 2003). The ERQ
measures the habitual or regular use of two emotion regulation
strategies: cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression. Projects
that specifically focus on emotion regulation include:
- Cognitive reappraisal of LGB-identity vs. non-LGB-identity stress in
LGBT young adults (PI: De Jesús-Romero)
- Mechanisms of change in transdiagnostic guided self-help (PI: De
Jesús-Romero)
Heterogeneity
Heterogeneity of depression and the contribution of specifier
symptoms like melancholia to heterogeneity (PI: Buss)
Below are descriptions of projects we have ongoing. Prof. Lorenzo-Luaces is the PI or co-PI for the projects below, unless otherwise noted. For all projects we take special interest in individual differences
COMET (Indiana University Students)
Indiana University Research Study #10016
The Study of Affective Disorders’ Classification And Treatment Lab invites you to take part in COMET, an online wellness activity for college students.
Benefits of participating include:
- Learning skills that may help to improve your mood and well-being.
If you participate, you will be asked to:
- Complete an online program (lasting about 60-80 minutes) to improve your mood and well-being. You will either receive it immediately or after 2 months.
- Answer 3 short surveys (2, 4, and 8 weeks from now), lasting about 10-15 minutes, about the program and your well-being.
The information obtained during this study will be kept strictly confidential. Only the researchers will have access to the information you provide. You also have the opportunity to earn up to $15 for your participation.
If you have questions or concerns regarding your participation in this research study or about your rights as a research subject, you may contact lolorenz@indiana.edu
You can read the consent form to decide if you want to participate in the study by scanning the following QR code:
Other low-intensity treatments
Psychological interventions are effective treatments for depression, anxiety, stress, insomnia, and other common mental health concerns. Despite this, it is very difficult for most people to access treatments because they are expensive, time-consuming, and difficult to find. We have several projects studying interventions that are not as expensive as face-to-face psychotherapy with trained therapists, including internet apps and books. The projects include:
- Leveraging computational social sciences and natural language processing to optimize engagement and response to low-intensity CBT for depression and anxiety
- Feasibility of stepped care with single-session interventions and guided self-help CBT
- Psychologists’ use of waiting lists and willingness to use low-intensity treatments (PI: Peipert)
- Barriers to internet-based CBT use (PI: Peipert)
- Racial-ethnic diversity in trials of internet-based cognitive-behavioral therapy (PI: De Jesús-Romero)
- Willingness of individuals to use different low-intensity treatments (PI: De Jesús-Romero)
- Predictors of engagement with guided self-help (PI: Starvaggi)
Emotion regulation
One commonality of depression, anxiety, stress, insomnia, and other common mental health concerns may be that people have a hard time regulating their emotions, especially negative emotions. When we conduct studies, we usually include measures of emotion regulation, usually the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (Gross and John, 2003). The ERQ measures the habitual or regular use of two emotion regulation strategies: cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression. Projects that specifically focus on emotion regulation include:
- Cognitive reappraisal of LGB-identity vs. non-LGB-identity stress in LGBT young adults (PI: De Jesús-Romero)
- Mechanisms of change in transdiagnostic guided self-help (PI: De Jesús-Romero)
Heterogeneity
Heterogeneity of depression and the contribution of specifier symptoms like melancholia to heterogeneity (PI: Buss)
Social media
Social media is a relatively recent development. As of 2021, over 75% of adults in the United States are on a social media platform. That alone makes social media an interesting topic to study.
Most relevant to our work, there are reported correlations between social media use and poorer mental health with some worrying that social media use causes poorer mental health, at least in some people. While we do not know if this is true, social media is also interesting from a research perspective because people openly talk about their mental health and some social media behaviors can clue you in to people’s mental health (e.g., when individuals discuss feeling sad). Moreover, we can make inferences about people mental health and emotions based on their behavior. For example, in one study, we looked at the timing of activity on Twitter as an index of a person’s sleep/wake cycle. We found differences between Twitter users who reported being depressed and a random sample suggesting that people who were depressed were more active into the night and less active early in the morning. Watch me talk about this study below:
We have several ongoing studies under the umbrella of the Surveys of Online Cohorts for Internalizing symptoms And Language (SOCIAL). In SOCIAL-I, we surveyed a nationally representative sample of 1121 U.S. adults and administered a transdiagnostic battery of symptom assessments. We also obtained their consent to access their social media accounts. The aim of the project is to triangulate self-reported mental health data and social media activity. SOCIAL-II is an ongoing study that has overlapping measures with SOCIAL-I but expands the assessments to include temperament and eating pathology. We’ve recruited at least 2,015 college students and continue to collect each semester.