I told Emily I should write a blog post about what I’m up to for work these days. She said I should let her write it and see how accurate it is – it was a funny joke (but actually she pretty much got it right).
I’m a family scientist / clinical researcher / social scientist – whatever you want to say. My Ph.D. is in Family Social Science and Couple and Family Therapy (CFT). My master’s degree is also in CFT and if I only wanted to do clinical work I could have stopped with the master’s. The Ph.D. is a research degree and the overlap with therapy is that I’m interested in applied / clinical research.
Generally speaking, I’m interested in preventing negative child outcomes in families and communities that experience traumatic events or other stressors by supporting/intervening with parents. This translates into interests in psychological trauma, prevention science, parenting and parent training programs, cross-cultural research, and lots of other fun methodological stuff. I absolutely love my work – and I love to talk about it if you have questions. I’ll just briefly summarize my job and the projects I’m working on now so you can come up with all sorts of fun questions.
Right now – and hopefully for the next three years – I am a post-doctoral fellow in the Division of General Pediatrics and Adolescent Health in the Department of Pediatrics in the University of Minnesota Medical School. Within my post-doc, half of my time is working on a faculty member’s project and the rest of my time is working on my own research. In total, I’m working on 5 research projects, which I’ll briefly describe below. My hope is to have a research faculty position when I’m done with my post-doc (i.e., about 75-80% of my time would just be research). I also maintain a small private practice seeing clients one day a week, so I’ll describe that quickly first.
As a Couple and Family Therapist, I see a range of clients. The areas in which I have advanced training are treating post-traumatic stress disorder, couples counseling, and parenting, so I see a lot of people for concerns related to these areas. I also end up seeing a number of adolescent males simply because there are not many male therapists. I also see a lot of people for trauma, grief, and loss more generally speaking. I have a private practice within a group and if you’re curious, my website is www.CJMtherapy.com.
There are two research projects I would love to build on into the next stage of my career. The first is supporting parents in northern Uganda and adapting a parenting training program to their needs and wants. Northern Uganda is still rebuilding after decades of horrific war. In 2012, I was in Gulu, Uganda testing the feasibility of an adapted version of Parent Management Training with my doctoral advisor. This study was only with mothers but parents there requested that we include fathers as well. In response to these requests, I conducted an ethnographic study of the roles of fathers in northern Uganda and the impact of alcohol on these roles and their relationships. I spent most of the summer in 2014 there collecting data and then used these data for my dissertation, which I defended in May, 2015. I’ve written more about my time in Uganda on our blog and I should have papers published from this study in the next year.
The second project I hope to continue into my career is implementing parenting programs in primary care settings. The basic idea is that nearly all parents see a pediatrician – the reach is actually quite amazing – and so what better place could there be to engage parents that could benefit from additional support. We know that we have parenting programs that are effective at preventing children’s future behavior problems, future drug use, and future mental health issues, and even can have an effect on parent’s mental health and income a decade later (amazing, right!?). The problem is that it is hard to reach parents and it is even harder to convince them to participate in a program before there are significant issues. The next grant I write will hopefully move me in the direction of testing the implementation of a parenting program within primary care settings. I am also part of an Institute of Medicine collaborative discussing and writing a paper on this topic – which is pretty cool and something I’m really excited about.
For these last three projects I’ll be briefer. A colleague and I have been doing a small study to learn about secondary traumatic stress in interpreters. Therapists and other professionals get training about the effects of hearing horrific stories over and over; interpreters hear (and speak) these same stories but get little support. The research has led to workshops and may lead to a support group.
In line with my primary interests I am also working on a couple of papers with a few colleagues using data from a trial of a parenting program with military families. This is the same parenting program that we are adapting for northern Uganda.
Finally, the project that half my time is on for the next year is a study to learn about the community resources that promote resilience in LGBTQ youth. The first phase of the study consists of qualitative interviews with LGBTQ youth in three different cities. Then from these interviews, we will make an inventory that can be paired with student survey data to determine the extent to which these resources are associated with positive outcomes for LGBTQ youth. It is a really cool project.
So much stuff! Like I said – I’d love to talk about it more if you are curious. And for what it’s worth – to the 10 people reading this – I’m always happy to chat about parenting, trauma, or mental health stuff if you have questions or want to bounce thoughts around.
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