
David Atkins, PhD
Personal Statement
”Can you recommend a good therapist?” Turns out, that is a very challenging question to answer. Whereas some medical fields have reasonable quality indicators (e.g., procedure complication rates, hospital readmissions), with psychotherapy it is very challenging to measure quality.
My research brings together psychotherapy experts with engineers and computer scientists to develop automated methods for evaluating and promoting high-quality counseling and therapy. To do this we rely on speech signal processing and machine learning methodologies and then present it to clinicians and patients using interactive visual summaries.
Education
PhD, Clinical Psychology , University of Washington , 1997-2003
MA, Psychology , Stanford University , 1994-1995
BA, Psychology , Stanford University , 1990-1994
Department Affiliations
Centers/Programs
My work focuses on technology-augmented psychotherapy and behavioral interventions, where we use machine learning and user-centered design to provide fast, objective, performance-based feedback to clinicians to assist training, supervision, and quality monitoring. More generally, I’m interested in data science applications in Psychiatry and assist colleagues in designing studies and analyzing data.
- Discovery of conversational best practices in online mental health support
- A cluster-randomized controlled trial testing the effectiveness of the Life Enhancing Alcohol-management Program (LEAP) for Housing First residents
- NORTH: Developing a mobile health intervention to support treatment seeking in early psychosis
- Developing measurement-based care tools for addiction treatment clinics
- Project WISE (Workplace Integrated Support & Education)
- Mobile RDoC: Using smartphone technology to understand Auditory Verbal Hallucinations (AVH)
Recent Publications
(2023 Oct)
J Gen Intern Med 38(Suppl 4): 934-936
Atkins D, Clancy C, Elnahal S
(2023 Jan-Dec)
Implement Res Pract 4(): 26334895231187906
Berkel C, Knox DC, Flemotomos N, Martinez VR, Atkins DC, Narayanan SS, Rodriguez LA, Gallo CG, Smith JD
(2023 Jun)
Couns Psychother Res 23(2): 378-388
Soma CS, Wampold B, Flemotomos N, Peri R, Narayanan S, Atkins DC, Imel ZE
(2022 Jan-Mar)
IEEE Trans Affect Comput 13(1): 508-518
Gibson J, Atkins DC, Creed T, Imel Z, Georgiou P, Narayanan S
(2023 May)
Psychol Addict Behav 37(3): 447-461
Larimer ME, Graupensperger S, Lewis MA, Cronce JM, Kilmer JR, Atkins DC, Lee CM, Garberson LA, Walter T, Ghaidarov TM, Hummer JF, Neighbors C, LaBrie JW
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