United States academic landscape got you down? Apply to join my lab at the University of Regina in Saskatchewan, Canada! I’m planning to accept a graduate student in Clinical Psychology. Additional information: https://www.uregina.ca/academics/programs/arts/master-phd-clinical-psychology.html

Papers I Can’t Assign: https://meehl.umn.edu/sites/meehl.umn.edu/files/files/099caseconferences.pdf (One of these days, perhaps, I will stop reading the field of academic psychology for filth. Today is not that day.)

First day of classes 🥹

Why I Don’t Teach the Hidden Curriculum:

Live feed of my heart when I pulled up to my new gig and discovered that it not only looks, but also feels, exactly like this:

🚨 Follow alert! Ceci Westbrook, MD, PhD is a postdoc in the lab specializing in fMRI of repetitive thought and related processes. Check out her latest paper on reward responsiveness (with @cdladouceur.bsky.social)!

Meeting the neighbors

It’s officially official: I’M MOVING TO SASKATCHEWAN! If you’ve never had the experience of a country welcoming you with open arms, it’s difficult to explain. I’m deeply moved and profoundly grateful and will continue to do everything in my power to be deserving of it.

Support your public library. Defend your public library. Slay the enemies of your public library.

Hey linguistics folks, you know what I would love? A semantic distance thesaurus. I want to type in two words and have it tell me the word(s) that are semantically between them. Anybody feel like partnering with industry to get on that?

There’s no conspiracy to ‘turn’ anyone anything, but I did notice that when I started engaging with content in a first-person/diaristic way, algorithms start personalizing what they sent me. Part of that personalization included stable demographic characteristics, and wow was that eye-opening.

And now for something completely different! In this new lab preprint led by Ceci Westbrook, we find a link between successful control of repetitive thought and increased activity in attention-related brain networks. By contrast, default mode activity was not associated with regulatory success.

::very Meryl Streep voice:: Michelle Newman. For a paper on worry? Groundbreaking. (Just kidding I am eternally grateful)

Associate Editors reviewing the list of "recommended alternative reviewers" from folks who declined the request.

I find it frustrating because clinical psychologists are among the only people actually qualified to speak on the health science relevance of the structure, but there is an aggressively-enforced prohibition on acknowledging it out loud — which precludes actual, legitimate science.

I sort of understand Taylor Swift and Beyoncé keeping things hush-hush. I don’t respect it, but I understand their motivation. Academics are simply not paid anywhere near enough to justify this level of selling out.

I understand that “it’s a secret.” What I do not understand is how our field justifies the preservation of that secrecy while championing the concepts of (open!) science and education. If we have knowledge, we’re supposed to share it openly and transparently. That’s supposed to be our whole thing.

I still can’t wrap my brain around the reluctance to engage in this discourse. You can all honestly do a close read of albums like folklore and RENAISSANCE and think, “this structure seems coincidental. It certainly doesn’t mirror my own digital experience or the sociopolitical landscape.” Really?

It seems an apt time to re-up our preprint describing crises that (especially academic) clinical psychology faces under fascism, as well as opportunities we see for moving forward with purpose. I neglected to say this in my first post, but feedback is very welcome.

Scenes from my local #NoKings protest. Chant: NO KINGS! NO ICE! NO FASCIST USA!

"Gosh, why am I so anxious?"she wondered as she finalized paperwork for her international move taking occasional breaks to watch footage of paramilitarized masked agents of her home country's fascist regime tackling migrants, citizens, and senators in the streets. "Must be too much caffeine."

Happy this is out & honored to be a part of it. As the subtitle says, I hope many of us are transitioning in the face of threats to science from crisis mode to reclaiming purpose.

Very intriguing first paragraph; going straight on the top of the TOREAD pile. Very impressed with @laurenshallion.bsky.social et al.'s direct naming of rising fascism as a major problem to science. Tackling it head-on seems more productive than dancing around it and/or ostrich-ing.

I can’t explain how relieved I am to see this stipulation rescinded. Assuming they let me move the grant to Canada (fingers crossed), it means my lab, collaborators @christianwebb.bsky.social, Hani Zainal, and I are about to have the chance to do some really freaking cool mental health science.

An HONOR to be on a paper with this killer crew. Thank you for @laurenshallion.bsky.social for your leadership on this project!

Mental Health Science Under Threat: Confronting Crises and Reclaiming Purpose with @lluaces.bsky.social @sheilacrowell.bsky.social @junegruber.bsky.social @tinaboisseau.bsky.social @anthonyperillo.bsky.social @anthonyperillo.bsky.social @cdelawalla.bsky.social https://osf.io/nz42x

Crises for the field include funding cuts, censorship, DEI dismantling, gaslighting, reactionary centrism, and extreme mindsets. Opportunities we identify include paradigm shifts, dismantling traditional hierarchies, values re-alignment, public outreach, and resourcefulness.

I’m thrilled to share this preprint with a brilliant co-author team. We describe several crises mental health science faces in the current sociopolitical context, as well as new and previously-overlooked opportunities to make non-incremental progress. https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/nz42x_v1

Anyway, I'm working with some (truly brilliant) folks on a Perspective paper about ::gestures widely:: and wow is it some of the most therapeutic and rewarding work I've done in a long time. Buckle up and stay tuned, folks. We have THINGS TO SAY.

Anecdotally, it makes you attractive to places that like the cut of your jib. The most important thing I’ve learned so far about “making waves” is that a lot of people really appreciate the ocean 🌊

Anyway, there’s such a thing as a reliable and valid playlist, and I don’t really know what to do with that information except to continue to observe that the arts have a lot to teach us, and that we would do well as a scientific field to take note of that and learn.

A theoretical framework for studying the phenomenon of gaslighting: https://osf.io/3b6fg

I got the Notice of Award anyway. I’m willing to bet I’m the first scientist to be pissed off to receive one. I’m also pretty sure the “no DEI” order is a ploy to allow prosecution of scientists and institutions who could even be construed as being anti-racist. We need lawyers on this, now.

“By accepting the grant award, recipients are certifying that: (i) They do not, and will not during the term of this financial assistance award, operate any programs that advance or promote DEI…” …was the point at which I emailed my PO to withdraw my pending award. My soul has expensive taste.

Psychology is overwhelmingly comprised of brilliant people genuinely doing the best work they know how to do (and then trying to do better than that), with a small but potent side of gatekeepers in power positions actively working to stop them. What a stupid situation.

I would *love* to be arrested for illegally smuggling ideas into the country. Where do I sign up.

there are people to blame for this. not one of them is transgender.

In honor of my 42nd peer-reviewed publication, I’d like to share some highlights from my collection of albums and soundtracks that replicate. I love them for re-sparking my awe and reminding me that there are many ways of knowing. Science is not the only kind of research with something to teach us.

technicolor sun #sun #sunset #sunsets #goldenhour #evening #dusk #beach #beaches #beachday #waves #ocean #nature #naturephotography #photography

People who don’t vaccinate their kids because they think vaccines cause autism would rather risk their kid dying than risk their kid having autism. We don’t talk about that enough. Also: there’s no such thing as a vaccine for your thoughts. Best we can do is good old fashioned critical thinking.

Perhaps someone can fact-check me on this, but I am *pretty sure* the founders had some *really rather strong* opinions on personal freedoms. The first amendment protects our right to free expression. We are WELL within our protected rights to assemble and protest.

Can we skip classifying thoughts into “types”? What if we match on dimensions instead? Hani Zainal, Christian Webb, and I investigate at Behaviour Research and Therapy: Direct Mapping of Intervention to Thought Features: A Bayesian Proof-of-Concept Study https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brat.2025.104717

☀️ Stand Up for Science☀️ #StandUpForScience #StandUpForScience2025 @standupforscience.bsky.social

Hello from #StandUpForScience @standupforscience.bsky.social#StandUpForSciencein Washington, DC!

HEY! Any clinical science/psychology people coming to DC on Friday for #standupforscience2025??? Shall we have an impromptu gathering???? Comment and let me know! @laurenshallion.bsky.social

I'm writing an NIMH memo detailing how our grant will respond to the executive orders which mostly means I'm trying not to chew my tongue off as I explain the concept of a representative sample to the suits suddenly in charge of American healthcare. #StandUpForScience

I’ll be there! W-A-S-H-I-N-G-T-O-N, baby, D.C!

Now published in Behavior Therapy: Anxiety, worry, and difficulty concentrating: A longitudinal examination of concurrent and prospective symptom relationships Led by Mary Blendermann with the COVID-19 Mental Health Workgroup https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1kg3X1KFqdjw9