APF Research Roundup: AANHPI (Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander) Mental Health - 2025 Division 56 CHANGE Grant is sponsored by American Psychological Foundation (APF). This grant supports research focusing on suicide risk among young people and how identity-related stress contributes to suicidal thoughts and behaviors, particularly within Asian American communities.

APF Research Roundup: Accessibility & Implementation of Mental Health Care - American Psychological Foundation Ways to Give Toggle Submenu Franklyn Springfield Awareness Fund Impact Reports Toggle Submenu APF Research Roundup: Accessibility & Implementation of Mental Health Care by APF Staff on October 08, 2025 This week is Mental Illness Awareness Week, centered on the theme of access to care.

Too many people and communities face barriers to mental health support, including limited culturally responsive and safe interventions. At the American Psychological Foundation, we want to help break those barriers. We’re proud to fund research, programs, and initiatives that expand access to care, tailored to the diverse needs of individuals and communities.

Our goal is to help ensure mental health support is available, equitable, and effective for everyone as we work towards a world where people are healthy, happy, and living with dignity. Recently, APF has funded several projects dedicated to accessible, equitable, and effective mental health care.

We are beyond grateful to our funding recipients who are actively doing this work, and to our community of donors and supporters that make this work possible. Read on to learn more about some of the incredible research & impact being driven by APF’s funding recipients!

Eman Tadros, PhD (she/her) Richardson-Lowman Serious Mental Illness Research Grant Reducing Serious Mental Illness through Romantic Attachment with Incarcerated Men in Relationships I used data from the Multi-site Family Study on Incarceration, Parenting, and Partnering to examine how romantic attachment affects depression and PTSD symptoms in incarcerated men over an 18-month period.

What I found was striking—those with more secure attachment styles had significantly fewer PTSD symptoms, suggesting that fostering romantic connection may be a powerful, underutilized tool for improving mental health during incarceration.

Kiara Álvarez, PhD (she/her) Bloomberg Assistant Professor of American Health, Department of Health, Behavior and Society at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health 2025 Direct Action Visionary Grant Enhancing Mental Health Support for Latine Families Facing Immigration Stress Our team has developed an intervention program delivered by community health workers (CHWs) to caregivers of youth with suicidal ideation and/or behavior who are referred from pediatric primary care practices.

This American Psychological Foundation Direct Action Visionary Grant provides the important opportunity to continue delivering the intervention to Spanish-speaking caregivers who face barriers in accessing mental health education and support, while also creating new training and intervention materials that our program’s CHWs need to effectively address the unique stressors facing these families.

Through our work, we aim to make evidence-based suicide prevention available broadly, using an approach based in family strengths, with information delivered by trusted messengers, in the settings where families typically seek care.

Vincent Pignatiello, PhD (he/him) & Jason Frederick, PsyD (he/him) 2024 John and Polly Sparks Grant for Rural First-Responders Mental Health Interventions Mindfulness-Based Wellness for First Responders There is currently a need for mental health services for the first responders in the Greater Monadnock Region in New Hampshire. We hope that our will will to begin providing some of those needed services.

Moreover, as part of this project we hope to establish training model to increase the number of psychologists graduating from the Antioch University New England PsyD program with the competence to work with first responders. Alice E.

Coyne, PhD (she/her) 2024 Walter Katkovsky Research Grant Leveraging New Technologies to Optimize Psychotherapy Outcomes for Underserved Populations Dr. Coyne’s research aims to identify and develop ways to capitalize on patient, therapist, and dyadic characteristics and processes that can enhance the effectiveness of psychosocial treatments for affective conditions (e.g., depression, anxiety).

Within this broad area, she is particularly interested in studying strategies for personalizing treatment selection, intervention delivery, and therapist selection to the unique needs of each individual patient.

The overarching goal of her research program is to help bridge the science-practice gap by increasing the effectiveness and precision of therapeutic interventions, including when delivered in routine practice settings that can reach historically underserved and marginalized populations.

2024 COGDOP Graduate Student Scholarships Helping Young Adults Cope with Distressing Emotions: A Randomized Trial of an Online Single-Session Emotion Regulation Intervention Riley’s research focuses on accessible, effective, and equitable mental health care. Her prior work has concentrated on the evaluation of scalable interventions, with an emphasis on their performance across demographic groups.

She examines intervention effectiveness through a transdiagnostic lens, recognizing the broad impacts of many existing treatments. She is additionally interested in studying demographic disparities in psychopathology risk factors. Currently, she is developing an online, self-directed single-session intervention targeting emotion dysregulation, a transdiagnostic risk factor that is often exacerbated for marginalized populations.

Her aim in creating and evaluating a scalable, transdiagnostic intervention is to combine accessibility with flexibility and efficiency, therein maximizing both reach and impact. Alyssa Di Bartolomeo (she/her) 2023 K.

Anders Ericsson Dissertation Research Grant Investigating the Effects of a Novel Deliberate Practice Psychotherapy Training Intervention for Community Mental Health Workers The primary goal of this research is to improve psychotherapy training practices with hopes of bettering client outcomes long term.

Research to date, indicates that current models of psychotherapy training are not as effective in improving mental health outcomes as we might hope. As such, I hope to harness evidence-based techniques, like deliberate practice, to improve the development and maintenance of therapy skills in clinicians of all levels. Want to contribute to projects like this and create impact through psychology?

Donate to APF today! The Power of Being Seen: Pride & Mental Health Care Dr. Lindsey Buckman has built her career around being the kind of provider who meets people where they are.

From her early training in trans-affirming care and HIV/AIDS services at the Los Angeles LGBT Center, to her current work supporting individuals and couples through fertility, family-building, chronic illness, and identity-related challenges, she has dedicated her career to helping people feel seen, supported, and empowered to live authentic, fulfilling lives.

Where in the World is APF with Dr. Sasha Canan We’re catching up with Dr. Sasha Canan, who received a 2016 Roy Scrivner Memorial Research Grant for the project, “A Mixed-methods Study of Sexual violence and Familial Support in Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Adults.

” Psychology & Philanthropy In Action with Dr. Beth Turetsky: Trans Mentor Project At APF, we’re bringing together the shared power of psychology and philanthropy to create a world where people are healthy, happy, and living with dignity. …