Research

The overarching goal of Dr. Schwartz’s research is to prevent depression in youth and families, with a particular focus on identifying novel avenues of intervention to make care easier to access and more effective. Depression is a highly prevalent and debilitating disorder that impacts individuals of all ages. Depressive episodes, especially those that onset in childhood or adolescence, promote challenges across domains, including substance use, suicidality, reduced earning potential, and transmission of depression risk between family members. Depression is also highly comorbid with most other forms of psychopathology, worsening outcomes. Access indicated care is difficulty and there is significant room for improvement to make therapeutic approaches for youth with depression more effective. Thus, it is an essential public health target to improve the efficacy and reach of depression interventions. 

Depression onset, maintenance and recurrence are predicted by many individual (e.g., anxiety, ADHD, impaired emotion regulation) and environmental (e.g., parental psychopathology, family discord, post-high school transition) factors that are typically not addressed simultaneously in treatment, limiting intervention utility and longevity. As such, Dr. Schwartz’s research contributions have focused on building our understanding of how intervention packages should be built to make them most effective and accessible, when during development intervention efforts are most effective in minimizing depression onset and impact, and who should be involved in these efforts. Most recently, Dr. Schwartz has been focused on lifting up caregivers as key partners in preventing depression in youth.

Dr. Schwartz’s focus on interventions research has enabled her to develop a uniquely deep understanding of the theoretical basis of evidence-based care that she shares with patients and families in an accessible and flexible manner.

Please reach out if you have questions about therapy and what it might look like for you!

For a list of Dr. Schwartz’s publications: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/myncbi/1899vrp_vBvAC/bibliography/public/