Mark A Lumley

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Wayne State University

Objective: Adults with traumatic brain injury (TBI) often show deficits in recognition of facial emotion, but their ability to remember emotions is poorly understood. Furthermore, there are no practicable tasks that measure this ability. This study examined the construct of memory for emotions using a novel Facial Recognition and Memory for Emotion...

Background Adverse childhood experiences (ACE) are associated with later psychological and somatic problems, including the emotional sequelae of adverse events (depression, anxiety, and catastrophizing) and outcomes such as chronic pain intensity and pain‐related functioning. ACE have rarely been studied in women with pelvic, urogenital, and/or bl...

Background Chronic spinal (back/neck) pain is common and costly. Psychosocial treatments are available but have modest effects. Knowledge of treatment mechanisms (mediators and moderators) can be used to enhance efficacy. Trials that directly compare different treatments are needed to determine which mechanisms are treatment-specific, which are sha...

Objective We examined whether the treatment effects from a previous RCT of Internet-delivered Emotional Awareness and Expression Therapy (I-EAET) for somatic symptom disorder were maintained 12 months after treatment. Method 12-month assessments of self-reported somatic symptoms, pain severity, and several secondary outcomes were compared with bas...

Objectives: Preliminary examination of emotional awareness/expression relationships with pain in people with traumatic brain injury (TBI) and chronic pain (CP) and exploration of psychological factors as mediators or moderators of these relationships. Methods: Cross-sectional study in adults (N = 59) with chronic TBI and CP using Toronto Alexith...

Importance Chronic pain is common and disabling in older adults, and psychological interventions are indicated. However, the gold standard approach, cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), produces only modest benefits, and more powerful options are needed. Objectives To evaluate whether emotional awareness and expression therapy (EAET) is superior to...

Chronic pain remains poorly managed. The integration of immersive technologies (ie, virtual reality [VR]) with neuroscience-based principles may provide effective pain treatment by targeting cognitive and affective neural processes that maintain pain and therefore potentially changing neurobiological circuits associated with pain chronification and...

Objective Accurate processing of facial displays of emotion is critical for effective communication. A robust literature has documented impairment in the ability to recognize facial affect in people with traumatic brain injury (TBI), but research is scarce about memory for facial affect. Disruptions in recognizing and remembering the emotions of ot...

Importance In primary chronic back pain (CBP), the belief that pain indicates tissue damage is both inaccurate and unhelpful. Reattributing pain to mind or brain processes may support recovery. Objectives To test whether the reattribution of pain to mind or brain processes was associated with pain relief in pain reprocessing therapy (PRT) and to v...

Chronic pain remains poorly managed. The integration of innovative immersive technologies (i.e., virtual reality (VR)) with recent neuroscience-based principles that position the brain as the key organ of chronic pain may provide a more effective pain treatment than traditional behavioral therapies. By targeting cognitive and affective processes th...

Childhood adversity and emotional conflicts are associated with the presence and severity of chronic musculoskeletal pain (CMP), yet common treatments for CMP do not address such risk factors. We developed a single-session, emotion-focused psychodynamic interview, based on Emotional Awareness and Expression Therapy and Intensive Short-term Psychody...

This article memorializes Gisela Labouvie-Vief (1945-2022). The deceased was a distinguished lifespan developmental psychologist and internationally renowned scholar in psychological aging research. In several highly noted theoretical articles she developed a theory of adult intellectual development that was neo-Piagetian in nature. This theory inf...

Objective: To examine the extent to which three sociobehavioral proxies of cognitive reserve-years of education, education quality, and cognitive enrichment-differ in their prediction of cognitive performance among Black and White people with MS (PwMS). Methods: 82 PwMS (Black n = 41, White n = 41) underwent a neurological examination and a neur...

Emotional processing interventions for trauma and psychological conflicts are underutilized. Lack of adequate training in emotional processing techniques and therapists’ lack of confidence in utilizing such interventions are barriers to implementation. We developed and tested an experiential training to improve trainees’ performance in a set of tra...

Objective: Seminal advances in virtual human (VH) technology have introduced highly interactive, computer-animated VH interviewers. Their utility for aiding in chronic pain care is unknown. We developed three interactive telehealth VH interviews-a standard pain-focused, a psychosocial risk factor, and a pain psychology and neuroscience educational...

Background: A growing body of literature suggests that mindfulness-based interventions are effective in reducing smoking. However, existing mindfulness interventions are often lengthy and require extensive interaction with a therapist, making them inaccessible to a large percentage of the population. The current study addressed this issue by testin...

Objective: Social media groups for chronic pain have become increasingly popular, but the effects of these groups are largely unknown, and members may be exposed to both helpful and harmful group processes. We created a Facebook intervention for adults with chronic pain and used a mixed-methods design to evaluate the effects of group membership on...

Research into the neurobiological and psychosocial mechanisms involved in fibromyalgia has progressed remarkably in recent years. Despite this, current accounts of fibromyalgia fail to capture the complex, dynamic, and mutual crosstalk between neurophysiological and psychosocial domains. We conducted a comprehensive review of the existing literatur...

In a recently published randomized controlled trial, two-thirds of patients receiving a novel psychological treatment, pain reprocessing therapy (PRT), reported elimination or near-elimination of chronic back pain. Mechanisms of PRT and related treatments remain poorly understood but are hypothesized to center on pain reappraisal, fear reduction, a...

There is growing recognition that traditional research training in health service psychology (HSP) inadequately addresses issues of social justice, inclusiveness, antiracism, and health equity. Social responsiveness involves using psychologists’ professional roles to actively address issues affecting the public while assuming the inherent interdepe...

Objectives Emotional Awareness and Expression Therapy (EAET) targets trauma and emotional conflict to reduce or eliminate chronic pain, but video telehealth administration is untested. This uncontrolled pilot assessed acceptability, feasibility, and preliminary efficacy of group-based video telehealth EAET (vEAET) for older veterans with chronic mu...

Fibromyalgia is characterized by widespread pain, fatigue, sleep disturbances and other symptoms, and has a substantial socioeconomic impact. Current biomedical and psychosocial treatments are unsatisfactory for many patients, and treatment progress has been hindered by the lack of a clear understanding of the pathogenesis of fibromyalgia. We prese...

Background and objective: People with fibromyalgia (FM) often report having difficulty with emotional identification and expression, and this "alexithymia" may contribute to their pain and other symptoms. Multiple studies have assessed alexithymia in FM, and we systematically reviewed and meta-analyzed this literature to: a) describe the prevalenc...

Objectives Trauma- and emotion-focused chronic pain interventions, particularly Emotional Awareness and Expression Therapy (EAET), show much promise for reducing pain and improving functioning. We developed a novel, single-session, telehealth-delivered EAET class (“Pain, Stress, and Emotions”; PSE) and tested it on adults with chronic pain of mixed...

Background: The effect of multiple stressors on immigrant young adults' endocrine functioning and health outcomes has not been comprehensively investigated. Aims: This study tested a theoretical model of cumulative and current stressor effects on the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical (HPA) axis functioning and health-related quality of life...

A single session of Emotional Awareness and Expression Therapy (EAET)—the EAET Interview—was previously shown to lead to clinical benefits for patients with centralized somatic conditions in primary care (Ziadni et al. in Health Psychol 37(3):282–290, 2018) and tertiary care (Carty et al. in Pain Med 20(7):1321–1329, 2019) settings. There has yet t...

Objective Somatic symptom disorder (SSD) is commonly encountered in health care settings. Cognitive-behavioural treatments have been most extensively studied, but they tend to have small effects of temporary duration. Emotional awareness and expression therapy (EAET) is a newly developed treatment for SSD, targeting emotional processing of trauma a...

Despite the popularity and affordances of social media groups for people with chronic conditions, there have been few controlled tests of the effects of these groups. This randomized controlled superiority trial examined the effects of Facebook groups on pain-related outcomes and tested whether a professional-led group leads to greater effects than...

Introduction: Refugees are at increased risk for trauma-related mental health disorders, including anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The underlying biological mechanisms linking trauma to mental disorders need additional study, and the possible pathophysiological role of the immune system is attracting increasing inte...

The biopsychosocial model (BPS) of chronic pain aspires to be comprehensive, incorporating psychological and social factors omitted from biomedical models. Although psychosocial factors are viewed as highly influential in understanding behavioral and psychological responses to pain, these factors are usually viewed as modifiers of biological causes...

The 25-item Emotional Processing Scale (EPS) can be used with clinical populations, but there is little research on its psychometric properties (factor structure, test–retest reliability, and validity) in individuals with psychiatric symptoms. We administered the EPS-25 to a large sample of people (N = 512) with elevated psychiatric symptoms. We us...

Objective Brief, culturally-tailored, and scalable stress coping interventions are needed to address a broad range of stress-related health disparities, including among African Americans. In this study, we develop two brief justice writing interventions and demonstrate a methodological approach for evaluating how prompting African Americans to thin...

There is little research on risk and protective factors for Arab American women’s mental health, particularly the role played by religiosity and religious affiliation. This study examined two stress-related risk factors—childhood adversity and racism—and three religious protective factors—religious support, positive religious coping, and organized...

Objective The 25-item Emotional Processing Scale (EPS) is a measure of emotional processing. There is a scarcity of research about its factor structure, test-retest reliability, and validity in individuals with psychiatric symptoms. Method We administered the EPS-25 to a sample (N=512) of people with elevated psychiatric symptoms, using confirmato...

Examination of physiological coregulation among marital partners suggests a dynamic interplay between partner physiology. Further, attachment dimensions of anxiety and avoidance mediate this coregulation during conflict. This study examined the role of attachment and race in predicting physiological coregulation for mothers and their adult daughter...

There is a growing movement to integrate behavioral health specialists into primary care settings in order to better manage patients’ health behaviors. Group interventions in healthcare settings can provide services to multiple individuals simultaneously; however, the participants’ experiences taking part in these activities and the logistics of in...

Objective: The aim of this study was to investigate emotional processing as a potential mediator in therapist-guided, internet-based Emotional Awareness and Expression Therapy (I-EAET) for somatic symptom disorder, using data from a previously published pilot study. Methods: Participants (N = 52) engaged in a 9-week I-EAET treatment. Before treatme...

Objectives Stress may augment somatic symptoms in central sensitivity syndromes (CSS) such as fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, and irritable bowel syndrome. To test this hypothesis, we examined whether the association between COVID-19 stress and somatic symptom severity would be stronger in people with than without CSS and whether psychologi...

Importance Chronic back pain (CBP) is a leading cause of disability, and treatment is often ineffective. Approximately 85% of cases are primary CBP, for which peripheral etiology cannot be identified, and maintenance factors include fear, avoidance, and beliefs that pain indicates injury. Objective To test whether a psychological treatment (pain r...

Objective: In this exploratory study, we sought to understand the effect of sexual victimization on the health of an understudied population—Arab American women—and the potential moderating effects of cultural and social factors on the relationship between sexual victimization and health. Method: In a cross-sectional study, a sample of 120 Arab Ame...

Background Stress might augment pain in people with fibromyalgia, possibly through sensitization of the central nervous system. The COVID-19 pandemic offers a unique opportunity to examine this mechanism. If it holds, the link between COVID-19 stress and pain would be stronger in people with fibromyalgia than in people without it. Additionally, psy...

Refugees experience distress from premigration trauma, often exacerbated by postmigration difficulties. To develop effective interventions, risk factors for mental health symptoms need to be determined. Male Iraqi refugees (N = 53) to the United States provided background information and reported predisplacement trauma and psychological health with...

Objective A recent meta-analysis of 17 randomized, controlled trials (RCTs) showed that Short-term Psychodynamic Psychotherapy (STPP) for functional somatic disorders (FSD) reduced somatic symptoms compared to wait list, minimal treatment, and treatment-as-usual controls. A clinically important yet unanswered question is how much improvement patien...

Background: There is growing evidence that trauma, psychosocial conflict, and difficulties with emotional processing contribute to centralized somatic symptoms. Emotional Awareness and Expression Therapy (EAET) was developed to address these factors and reduce symptoms, and EAET has shown efficacy in face-to-face formats. No trial of an internet-de...

Emotional awareness (EA) is a key emotional process that is related to the presence and severity of chronic pain (CP). In this report, we describe primary and secondary emotions, discuss the distinction between emotional states and emotional regulation/processing, and summarize theory and research highlighting the significance of EA for CP. We desc...

Although sexuality is an important aspect of peoples’ health and well-being, many people—professionals and patients alike—find sexuality uncomfortable to discuss. In Arab culture, certain sexual thoughts and behaviors are taboo, particularly for women, and it is not known whether an interview in which Arab American women disclose their sexuality to...

Aim The purpose of this study was to explore differences in the clinical psychology PhD program admissions experience (i.e., interviewing and decision‐making) by race/ethnicity and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) identity. Methods Participants were 803 students (24% racial/ethnic minority; 19% LGBTQ) enrolled in US clinical...

Chronic pain is a common and costly condition, and some people with chronic pain engage in problematic opioid use. There is a critical need to identify factors underlying this co-occurrence, so that treatment can be targeted to improve outcomes. We propose that difficulty with emotion regulation (ER) is a transdiagnostic factor that underlies the c...

Research into the neurobiological and psychosocial mechanisms involved in fibromyalgia (FM) has progressed remarkably in recent years. Despite this, current accounts of FM fail to capture the complex, dynamic and mutual crosstalk between neurophysiological and psychosocial domains. We conducted a comprehensive review of the existing literature in o...

Objectives: Many patients' chronic musculoskeletal pain is strongly influenced by central nervous system processes such as sensitization or amplification. Education about pain neuroscience can change patients' beliefs but has less consistent effects on pain outcomes. Patients may have greater clinical benefits if the educational intervention is pe...

Objective Chronic pain and borderline personality disorder (BPD) are commonly comorbid and jointly associated with increased symptoms of both disorders and clinical and functional impairment. Little is known, however, about specific links between these disorders. In a cross-sectional study of patients with chronic pain, we compared participants hig...

Background Emotional approach coping (EAC) is a potentially adaptive emotion‐focused coping style that involves understanding or processing one’s emotions and expressing them appropriately. Although EAC has been studied in various populations, little is known about this construct among people with chronic pain, including potential mediators such as...

Objective: Emotional awareness and expression therapy (EAET) emphasizes the importance of the central nervous system and emotional processing in the etiology and treatment of chronic pain. Prior trials suggest EAET can substantially reduce pain; however, only one has compared EAET with an established alternative, demonstrating some small advantage...

Introduction: Functionalsomatic disorders (FSD) are common and costly, thereby driving the need for the development of effective brief treatment options. Short-term psychodynamic psychotherapy (STPP) is one candidate treatment method. Objective: To review and meta-analyze, where possible, randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of STPP for FSD. Met...

Objectives: Quantitative sensory testing (QST) may help predict treatment responses in individuals with chronic pain. Our objective was to determine if evoked pain sensitivity at baseline predicted preferential treatment responses to either emotional awareness and expression therapy (EAET) or cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) in individuals with...

Problem The adverse effects of bullying victimization among adolescents have been examined extensively. However, few studies have examined how bullying perpetration affects health. Moreover, ethnic or religious minorities are particularly at risk for bullying involvement, but little is known about bullying among Arab Americans. The purpose of this...

Background and Aims: This study investigated the feasibility of an Internet-delivered Emotional Awareness and Expression Therapy (I-EAET) for adult patients with somatic symptom disorder (SSD). Although EAET for SSD has been shown to be effective in both individual and group format using RCTs, no trial of an internet-delivered EAET exists. Therefor...

Background Psychological war trauma among displaced refugees is an established risk factor for mental health disorders, especially post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Persons with trauma-induced disorders have heightened neuroplastic restructuring of limbic brain circuits (e.g., amygdala and hippocampus), which are critical factors in the pathop...

Chronic pain contributes to psychological and relationship distress in individuals with pain as well as their partners. Prior pain interventions have addressed this important social context by engaging partners in treatment; however, partners have not been considered co-participants who can benefit directly from therapy, but rather incorporated as...

Women’s self-defense training increases self-efficacy and reduces subsequent assaults, but self-defense training’s effects on women’s psychological and interpersonal functioning are understudied, particularly for women with histories of interpersonal victimization. This study examined the effects of a self-defense course on somatic symptoms, post-t...

Objective: Women with chronic urogenital pain (CUP) conditions have elevated rates of lifetime trauma, relational stress, and emotional conflicts, but directly assessing and treating psychological stress is rarely done in women's health care settings. We developed and tested the effects on patients' somatic and psychological symptoms of a life str...

Purpose of Review Patients with chronic pain, especially primary or centralized pain, have elevated rates of psychosocial trauma and intrapersonal or intrapsychic conflict. To address these risk factors and potentially reduce pain, the authors developed emotional awareness and expression therapy (EAET). This article presents the rationale for EAET,...

Objective: Evidence supports high rates of co-occurrence of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and chronic pain disorders involving central sensitization (CS). The nature of this relationship, however, remains relatively unexplored. In this study, we aimed to (1) assess how both trauma exposure and current PTSD symptoms are related to clinical m...

Numerous studies have examined how alexithymia (difficulty identifying and describing one’s emotions and a preference for externally-oriented thinking) relates to chronic pain and associated disability. We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis to summarize individual studies that either assessed alexithymia in individuals with chronic pai...

Objective: Chronic pain is a significant health problem that is increasing in prevalence, and advances in treatment are needed. Methods: We briefly review the leading evidence-based psychological therapies for chronic pain-cognitive-behavioral and acceptance / mindfulness-based therapies-and examine several limitations and missing perspectives o...

Background: Factors associated with prescription opioid misuse in a chronic pain treatment population are limited, and increasing our understanding of associated factors could lead to improved targeting of prevention and intervention efforts. Objective: The aim of this study was to evaluate factors associated with problematic prescription opioid...

Objective: To examine how health self-efficacy and cognitive impairment severity relate to functional independence after acquired brain injury (ABI). Design: Observational. Setting: Outpatient rehabilitation hospital. Participants: Seventy-five adults with predominately stroke or traumatic brain injury who were beginning a course of occupati...

This chapter describes the somatic, psychological, and social impact of EDS. Research indicates that pain and fatigue are common problems in EDS. In addition, patients may fear damage to their joints, skin, and other organs; progressive disability; and even death. Other psychological and social dilemmas or challenges often occur, including whether...

Background: Psychological treatments are efficacious for irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) in clinical trials; however, their effectiveness when conducted in gastroenterology practice settings is unclear. Aim: To perform a systematic review of the types and effects of psychological treatments for IBS conducted in gastroenterology clinics. Methods:...

Objective: Believing in justice can protect health. Among marginalized racial minorities however, both endorsing and rejecting beliefs about justice might be critical. The current research examined links between African Americans’ beliefs about justice for self and for others and telomere length (TL)—an indicator of biological aging that is increas...

Objective: Psychological treatments are generally beneficial for patients with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), but patients' responses vary. A prior randomized controlled trial found that both relaxation training (RT) and emotional awareness and expression training (EAET) were superior to a waitlist control condition for IBS symptoms, quality of l...

Background and objectives: The US Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services have mandated reducing early (30-day) hospital readmissions to improve patient care and reduce costs. Patients with ESKD have elevated early readmission rates, due in part to complex medical regimens but also cognitive impairment, literacy difficulties, low social support...

Affect regulation is important to mental health. A deficit in one’s ability to identify and express emotions (alexithymia), cognitive styles of regulating emotional conflict (defenses), and the capacity for integrative and complex self-other understanding (ego strength or maturity) need to be studied to understand how they relate to each other as w...

Objective: Lifetime trauma, relationship adversities, and emotional conflicts are elevated in primary care patients with medically unexplained symptoms (MUS), and these risk factors likely trigger or exacerbate symptoms. Helping patients disclose stressors, increase awareness and expression of inhibited emotions, and link emotions to physical symp...

Objectives The working alliance predicts improvement following general psychotherapy, but how it operates in brief interventions conducted with medically ill patients is unknown. Also, the role of the working alliance may differ in emotion-focused versus educational interventions. Methods We report secondary analyses of a randomized clinical trial...

This experiment demonstrates that chromosomal telomere length (TL) moderates response to injustice among African Americans. Based on worldview verification theory - an emerging psychosocial framework for understanding stress - we predicted that acute stress responses would be most pronounced when individual-level expectancies for justice were disco...

Patients with FM experience increased lifetime levels of psychosocial adversity, trauma, and emotional conflict. To address these risk factors, we developed Emotion Awareness and Expression Therapy (EAET) and tested its benefits against an active control condition, FM Education, and against the field's gold standard intervention for FM, cognitive-b...

Background: Current clinical guidelines identify several psychological treatments for irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). IBS patients, however, have elevated trauma, life stress, relationship conflicts, and emotional avoidance, which few therapies directly target. We tested the effects of emotional awareness and expression training (EAET) compared to...

Background Previous research on surgical decision-making is inconsistent regarding the relative importance of patient and surgeon preferences for treatment. Few studies have related clinical indicators and patients’ inherent attitudes to subsequent physician recommendations and treatment decisions. In this study we evaluated the influence of a pati...

Refugees frequently experience symptoms of posttraumatic stress and depression, which impede their acculturation in the new host country where they are resettling. There are few longitudinal studies investigating predictors of mental health and acculturation during the early postmigration period. We conducted a longitudinal study of 298 Iraqi refug...

Although kidnapping is common in war-torn countries, there is little research examining its psychological effects. Iraqi refugees (N = 298) were assessed upon arrival to the U.S. and 1 year later. At arrival, refugees were asked about prior trauma exposure, including kidnapping. One year later refugees were assessed for posttraumatic stress disorde...

This qualitative case study explored one client’s recovery from borderline personality disorder, trauma, and problem gambling. The client attended 18 months of integrative treatment and was followed for 5 years. The study included 106 data points of both client and therapist data. We identified three phases to treatment. First, alliance formation a...