Graduate Student pursuing Higher Education (Public Policy and Student Affairs), Graduate Assistant in Student Engagement at the University of Denver

Improving the Diagnosis and Treatment of Memory Disorders in Aging and Alzheimer's 

Natasha M. de la Rosa-Rivera, a 4th year Ph.D. candidate in the Neuroscience and Behavior Program, and 2019 CRF Graduate Student Grant Writers Program member was recently named as a recipient of an NIH dissertation award (R36) to complete and further her research. Receiving this award will allow Natasha to test her overarching hypothesis that brain regions contribute to a cognitive task – be it perceptual or mnemonic – according to the representations they contain. 

UMass Amherst graduates and current PhD students of the Affect and Social Cognition Lab directed by Linda Isbell have authored a new paper in press at the Journal of the American College of Emergency Physicians. This project is part of the grant "Emotional Influences on Diagnostic Error in Emergency Medicine: An Experimental Approach to Understand Diagnostic Failure and Facilitate Improvement for Patients with and without Mental Illness" funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

Authors: Welsh, Margaux; Chimowitz, Hannah; Nanavati, Janvi; Huff, Nathan R., & Isbell, Linda M.

Study objective: Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, emergency medicine providers in the United States have faced unprecedented challenges, risks, and uncertainty while caring for patients in an already vulnerable healthcare system. As such, the pandemic has exacerbated high levels of negative emotions and burnout among emergency medicine providers, but little systematic qualitative work has documented these phenomena. The purpose of this qualitative investigation was to study ED physicians’ emotional experiences in response to COVID-19 and the coping strategies that they employed to navigate the pandemic.

A diagnosis of depression can make those who suffer from the disorder feel lethargic, reluctant to participate in activities that once brought them pleasure, or feel unable to take action to better their situation. Behavioral activation (BA) is a method of psychotherapy that helps people get re-engaged in their life by reducing depression, enabling individuals to live more in the present moment, and increasing their overall enjoyment of life.