Emily Mellen

Harvard University | Harvard · Department of Psychology

Sexual violence (SV) is a stigmatized form of trauma, yet the stigma experiences of those reporting SV are often assumed rather than explicitly measured. We adapted a measure that quantified three key features of SV stigma across three levels: negative self-image (individual), disclosure concerns (interpersonal), and concerns about public attitudes...

Purpose Transgender adults face increasingly discriminatory laws/policies and prejudicial attitudes in many regions of the United States (US), yet research has neither quantified state-level transphobia using indicators of both, nor considered their collective association with transgender adults’ psychological wellbeing, hindering the identificatio...

Purpose Improved access to care, particularly primary care, is a key goal of healthcare reform proposals. Individuals with severe psychiatric illness have high rates of emergency room use rather than primary/preventive care. Massachusetts implemented health care reform in 2006 intended to provide more individuals with health care insurance and, the...

Purpose: Transgender adults face increasingly discriminatory laws/policies and prejudicial attitudes in many regions of the United States (US), yet research has neither quantified state-level transphobia using indicators of both nor considered their collective association with transgender adults’ psychological wellbeing, hindering the identificatio...

Objective: Research suggests six motives for exposing oneself to painful reminders of a trauma outside of a therapeutic context (self-triggering). These include provoking arousal, escaping emotional numbness, self-punishment, controlling symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), making meaning of one's trauma, and generating an experience...

Background: Relative to cisgender adolescents, transgender adolescents experience greater interpersonal trauma, depression, and suicidality. Structural transphobia (societal conditions constraining transgender people’s rights/wellbeing) may exacerbate associations between trauma and poor mental health for this group. Indeed, a recent study found mo...

Translational models of fear have greatly informed our understanding of PTSD and its underlying fear circuitry. One of the most replicated findings in the field is the two-fold higher PTSD incidence in females compared to males. While sociocultural factors play a role, the most robust biological influencers to date are gonadal hormones, such as est...

Objective: This study compared brain energy metabolism, as measured by cerebral concentrations of glutamate (Glu), glutamine (Gln), and N-acetyl aspartate (NAA), in older age bipolar depression (OABD) to that of psychiatrically healthy comparison subjects using proton (1H) magnetic resonance spectroscopy imaging at 4-Tesla. Metabolite levels were...

Introduction Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the most prevalent neurodegenerative disease of aging, affecting approximately 5.4 million individuals in the US, and predicted to increase to 13.8 million by 2050. Occurring in over 90% of AD patients, neuropsychiatric symptoms such as agitation, depression and apathy, contribute to caregiver burden and inc...