Robert Hilt

Robert Hilt, MD is a Professor in the UW Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and a psychiatrist at Seattle Children’s Hospital. He is the program director for the Partnership Access Line (PAL), a child mental health consultation service for primary care providers in Washington, Wyoming and Alaska. He is the Program Director for the Medicaid Medication Second Opinion Programs of Wyoming, Washington and Alaska, and Multidisciplinary Team (MDT) Psychiatric Consult Service in Wyoming for children in foster care. He has been involved in several collaborative care projects, in school support projects, and has helped to establish a statewide mental health referral service in Washington.  Dr. Hilt’s primary interest is to increase professional collaboration between child psychiatrists and pediatric medical providers, and to increase access to high quality care.

Emily Dworkin

Personal Statement

Dr. Dworkin’s research (1) explores how the social, community, and societal contexts in which trauma survivors recover affect their well-being and (2) seeks to find ways to make changes to these contexts to improve outcomes following trauma.

Jennifer Cadigan

Personal Statement

Dr. Cadigan is an Assistant Professor and licensed psychologist in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Missouri in 2016 and then completed clinical psychology internship and fellowship at the University of Washington Medical Center. Her program of research focuses on adolescent and young adult health and wellbeing, with an emphasis on the etiology, prevention, and intervention of substance misuse and co-occurring mental health concerns. This work aims to develop, test, and disseminate innovative prevention and intervention programs to reduce substance misuse and improve mental health among adolescents and young adults. This work has included developing and testing programs for young adults who use substances to cope with negative affect and loneliness. Her work has also examined etiological factors related to co-occurring mental health and substance use, including the effects of loneliness, depression, coping motives, social support, solitary substance use, and factors associated with improving access to mental health care. Clinically, she works with adolescents presenting with depression and suicidality at Seattle Children’s Hospital in the Behavioral Health Crisis Care Clinic and in the Mood and Anxiety Program.  
  • Recent Grants:
    • Development of a behavioral economic intervention with personalized resource allocation feedback to reduce young adult alcohol misuse  (PI: Cadigan, NIH/NIAAA1R34AA029478)
    • Development of an interactive, we-based drinking to cope intervention and tools to assess coping skill utilization (PI: Cadigan, NIH/NIAAA R34AA028074)

Benjamin Buck

Personal Statement

My research is focused on (1) developing innovative mHealth assessments and interventions for schizophrenia-spectrum disorders and cross-diagnostic persecutory ideation, as well as (2) “engagement mHealth,” or the development of mobile health interventions that increase the likelihood that underserved populations present to and receive evidence-based treatment, with a particular focus on young adults at risk for psychosis and their families. My research is supported by a NARSAD Young Investigator Award from the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation and multiple grants from NIMH including a K23 Mentored Patient-Oriented Research Career Development Award.

Prior to my faculty position at UW, I was an Advanced Fellow in VA Health Services Research and Development and the Department of Health Services at UW. I completed my clinical psychology internship at the VA Puget Sound Health Care System, where I was awarded the APA Division 18 Outstanding VA Trainee Award. Prior to internship, I completed my undergraduate and doctoral training at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Throughout my training, I have been dedicated to services for individual with serious mental illness, with experience in an inpatient state hospital, VA psychosocial rehabilitation, intensive outpatient and dual-diagnosis clinics, and in coordinated specialty care for young people with early psychosis.

In addition to my program of research and clinical work, I am committed to clinical supervision and training. I currently lead the development of one of the first clinical training sequences designed for frontline clinicians integrating mHealth into community mental health. I was the first-ever graduate student to win UNC’s David Galinsky Award, an honor recognizing excellence in clinical supervision that had previously only ever been won by faculty. I am currently active in providing supervision in CBT to third-year psychiatry residents at UW.

Amanda Focht

Personal Statement

I am experienced in the evaluation and treatment of a range of psychiatric conditions including anxiety and panic, mood disorders, psychosis, obsessive-compulsive disorder, posttraumatic stress disorder and personality disorders. I work with adult and geriatric patients in the outpatient setting.

Freda Liu

Personal Statement

My research focuses on strategies to improve pediatric mental health care quality, such as increasing measurement-based care–the use of patient/caregiver reported data to inform clinical-decision making. I also study the impact of quality improvement interventions on pediatric mental health service disparities with the goal of developing interventions to prevent or reduce such disparities and improving mental health care quality for all youths and families.

My clinical expertise includes Dialectical Behavior Therapy and Cognitive Behavior Therapy for teens and families to address a variety of mood and anxiety disorders as well as behavior problems and parent-child conflict. I provide parent training and consultation for managing young children’s anxiety and behavior problems. I am fluent in Mandarin Chinese.

Kristen Lindgren

Personal Statement

I am a Professor and Licensed Clinical Psychologist in the University of Washington’s Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and am Board Certified in Cognitive and Behavioral Psychology. I received my Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the UW in 2006 and returned to UW as a faculty member in 2010.

My research interests include problematic substance use (including alcohol and marijuana), posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), identity and self-concept, and resilience. My work focuses on investigating  implicit (i.e., non-conscious or automatic) cognitive processes and  processes related to self-concept and identity that contribute to the development and maintenance of maladaptive behavior and psychopathology. A second line of my work focuses on developing and increasing access to briefer, effective interventions for individuals who are trauma-exposed. Support for my work has been provided by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, and the University of Washington’s Garvey Institute for Brain Health Solutions and the Addictions, Drug & Alcohol Institute. I also serve as a consultant for dissemination projects aimed at training community-based mental health workers in Cognitive Processing Therapy and other evidence-based treatment for PTSD in locally, nationally, and internationally.

Arthur Lewy

Personal Statement

Dr. Lewy maintains a practice with immigrants and refugees at Harborview Hospital.  Core practice specialties include assessment, forensics, disability, cross cultural psychology, and clinical child psychology.  Core academic interests include anthropological and sociological perspectives on mental illness. ​ 

Mary Larimer

Personal Statement

I have been a member of the department faculty since 1995. My research and clinical interests include 1) prevention and treatment of alcohol and drug problems among adolescents and young adults (with a particular focus on college drinking prevention), 2) prediction of initiation of drinking and trajectories of alcohol and substance use during emerging adulthood, 3) co-morbidity of substance use with depression, suicide, trauma, PTSD, disordered eating, and gambling problems, 4) evaluation of housing and treatment programs for chronically homeless and incarcerated individuals and 5) dissemination of evidence-based prevention and treatment approaches into clinical, school, and work-site settings. I have published more than 100 articles and book chapters on these topics.​

Maria Monroe-DeVita

Personal Statement

My expertise is in implementation and services research related to evidence-based practices (EBPs) for adults with serious mental illness, particularly the Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) model. I am the lead author of the new ACT fidelity tool – the Tool for Measurement of Assertive Community Treatment (TMACT) – which has been widely disseminated nationally and in several other countries. I am also working to develop novel approaches to better addressing the needs of people with serious mental illness in the community. In 2010, I received a collaborative R34 from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) to integrate another EBP, Illness Management and Recovery (IMR) within ACT. I am also working with a national team of clinicians, policymakers and researchers to develop better approaches to address the primary care needs of people with serious mental illness, including those served on ACT teams.

I have served as the Principal Investigator (PI) on several statewide implementation projects with the Washington State Division of Behavioral Health and Recovery, including the development, implementation, and fidelity assessment of 10 new ACT teams, and several IMR and Integrated Dual Disorder Treatment (IDDT) pilots across the state. I am also the PI of a statewide learning collaborative focused on implementation of cognitive behavioral therapy for psychosis (CBTp) for clinicians and supervisors across Washington State. I have an interest in implementation science and serve as a Co-Investigator of the Society for Implementation Research Collaboration (SIRC), an NIMH-funded grant focused on collaborative approaches to implementation research and the dissemination of those findings more broadly to those who implement and sustain EBPs.  More recently, I began work collaboratively with a team of researchers to better address staff burnout prevention and the linkage to client outcomes.