My research examines risk and protective factors related to self-harm, with a particular focus on non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI). Recently I have been studying how health-related behaviors (e.g., physical activity/exercise and dietary habits) are related to NSSI severity. Other recent and ongoing studies that my students and I are engaged in include linkages between NSSI and alcohol use, social affiliative behavior, sexual orientation, and developmental trajectories. My work in this area more generally is grounded in a developmental psychopathology framework emphasizing connections between normative and atypical developmental processes as well as the reciprocal associations between behavior and the environment. A second set of research interests involves children and adolescents’ socioemotional development and the mechanisms through with peer and other primary social relationships affect functioning. For example, my prior research has examined close friends’ and parents’ perceptions of youth symptomatology, interactions between relationship functioning and perceptions of distress, and the effects of being in a dyadic friendship with a distressed partner. In addition to these primary areas of inquiry, recent research collaborations have involved clinically-oriented research with more severely impaired populations of children and adolescents (e.g., psychiatric inpatients) encompass a wide range of topics (e.g., engagement with inpatient treatment, childhood-onset bipolar disorder, and problematic video game use).
