Overview
See below for Instructional Philosophy

The Anxiety and Health Research Laboratory is an experimental psychopathology research laboratory designed for the study of emotional vulnerability as it applies to the etiology of anxiety-related disorders, particularly panic disorder. All work conducted in the Anxiety and Health Research Laboratory maintains an explicit "translational" framework, based on the assumption that basic research on emotion processes will directly inform answers to "pressing" clinical questions. At the same time, this translational approach explicitly recognizes how the careful study of psychopathological states can serve to improve our understanding of basic emotion processes. Research in the Anxiety and Health Research Laboratory typically utilizes the controlled production of important clinical processes (e.g., panic attacks), examination of such phenomena from multiple perspectives and with multiple measures, and discussion of these phenomena with reference across levels of analysis including biological, affective, cognitive, and behavioral domains. We also have a number of applied studies that extend this basic research in the form of clinical intervention studies that seek to modify risk factors for the onset and maintenance of anxiety and substance use problems. Our work is currently funded through a variety of agencies, including the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA).

Instructional Philosophy

The Anxiety and Health Research Laboratory is a teaching laboratory, with an explicit focus on training advanced undergraduate, graduate, and postdoctoral students in the development of scientific values and skills. This approach is based on the assumption that the critical examination of subject matter and utilization of empirical methods to answer questions about psychological functioning will be the most fruitful in making serious strides toward alleviating human suffering. At the same time, this instructional focus recognizes that scientific inquiry is highly creative, allowing for individual scientists to "push" the limits of their own curiosity. An overarching instructional aim in the Anxiety and Health Research Laboratory is to enhance students' understanding of both the behavior of others as well as their own behavior. This goal is intended to promote curiosity about behavioral functioning, and presumably in the process, facilitate greater levels of tolerance for individual differences. A second objective of the teaching efforts in the laboratory is to specifically help students become versatile and complete clinical psychologists. In this regard, we utilize the social processes of individual and team meetings to develop theoretically driven research projects. Accordingly, all research in the Anxiety and Health Research Laboratory reflects multiple perspectives and vantage points. Overall, by having students operate as "junior colleagues," we hope to instill skills in critical thinking and research development, allowing for the production and training of caring and effective scientist-practitioners.