I am a clinical scientist who is passionate about utilizing therapeutic principles to transform people’s mental and physical health, especially for those who hold minoritized or disadvantaged identities and have been exposed to early life trauma.
How does early life adversity impact one’s development and functioning? How and for who are current psychological treatments effectively or ineffectively targeting psychopathological and physical health concerns? The breadth and complexity of these questions have been the driving force behind my graduate research work since I took my first Abnormal Psychology course in high school! Personality traits have been identified as potential mechanisms for psychopathological and physical health outcomes after experiencing a variety of types of early life adversity, including physical/emotional/sexual abuse, neglect, discrimination, and poverty. My program of interdisciplinary research uses statistical, methodological, and theoretical tools from Clinical/Personality Psychology, Lifespan Development, and Behavioral Medicine to identify how a particular set of emotion-based personality traits, called trait responses to emotion (TREs for short), may serve as both mechanisms and points of intervention to reduce or buffer against maladaptive outcomes from early life adversity.
My current research is centered on how trait responses to emotion (e.g., how one's consistent style of coping develops into a personality trait) can impact or be impacted by adverse childhood experiences. More specifically, I am interested in how one's early life experiences can impact one's later emotional and health development into adulthood. I am also interested in how trait responses to emotion may serve as transdiagnostic mechanisms for psychopathology and how to best identify them to improve psychopathological risk for minoritized populations. I am currently continuing this program of research as a clinical psychology doctoral candidate in the Department of Psychology at the University of Kentucky.
I was born on Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland and spent much of my early childhood moving around the United States (and even outside of it!) until my father retired in Garner, North Carolina when I was 10 years old. After attending Wake Early College of Health & Sciences, where I earned both my high school diploma and an Associates of Arts, I earned my BA in Psychology and English-Creative Writing from North Carolina State University. I am currently a 6th year clinical psychology doctoral candidate at the University of Kentucky where I am studying under my in-house mentors, Suzanne Segerstrom, PhD, MPH, and Gregory Smith, PhD, and my adjunct mentor at North Dakota State University, Katherine Duggan, PhD.
You can find me on Twitter @AMAcademia93. My published research is available at Google Scholar; my ongoing projects may be available at OSF. In terms of larger service endeavors, I work hard to increase anti-racist and DEI efforts within institutions, psychological associations (principally, the American Psychosomatic Society) and psychology at large.
You can also email me at anita.adams1993 [at] gmail [dot] com.