Monitor on Psychology - December 2011 - (Page 34)

Since then, Nock, 38, has generated some of the most innovative and important research to date on suicide and selfharm, which earned him a prestigious $500,000 MacArthur Fellowship in September. The five-year “genius grant” supports scholars and others who are doing exceptionally creative and promising work. The prize will allow Nock to expand his efforts to tease out the predictors of self-injury and suicide and focus on his most recent work to measure thoughts of self-injury and suicide in real time through the use of digital diaries and other technology. “These are thoughts and behaviors that are really tough to capture,” says Nock, editor of the 2009 book “Understanding Non-Suicidal Injury.” “We can’t ethically induce them in the lab, U.S. Army, known as STARRS (the Study to Assess Risk and Resilience in Servicemembers). With researchers from the National Institute of Mental Health, the Army and several universities, Nock is using the military’s wealth of health and service data to investigate soldier suicides from the last five years. He and his colleagues are sifting through information on everything from a soldier’s military rank and promotion history to dental and medical records. Fusing this data will hopefully reveal clues as to what prompted these particular soldiers to choose suicide while others responded with resilience, says Nock. “We are also interviewing family members and supervisors “Matt can put ideas together in a comprehensive theory that most people wouldn’t ever think of doing. He is the leading clinical psychologist in the country, and No. 2 is too far away to even see him.” alan e. Kazdin yale university so we really need to be creative in how we capture these things out in nature.” For the past two years, Nock and his research team have been using electronic diaries and portable heart rate monitors to gauge people’s emotional and physical states before, during and after self-injury episodes. So far, his findings support what many people struggling with self-injury have noted for years — that self-harming soothes them. Data show that there is increased arousal right before selfinjury, and a huge decrease right after, says Nock. “That change is much sharper than what we see when people engage in other behaviors to try to relax, like meditation or reading a book or deep breathing,” he says. Nock and his team have also found that little time elapses between when adolescents first think about hurting themselves and then try it, and that these youth aren’t experiencing much pain — if any at all — when they cut or burn themselves. “Self-injurers ... can tolerate much more pain than noninjurers,” he says. When he’s not in his Harvard lab or teaching classes, Nock is an investigator for a large-scale study of suicide risk for the 34 of these soldiers to see if we can paint the picture of what was happening with them,” says Nock. Fellow STARRS investigator Ronald C. Kessler, PhD, says Nock brings “a rare combination of intellectual breadth and depth” to such an important study. “He works across the spectrum from studies of neurobiological substrates to in-depth studies of clinical cases to studies of enormous epidemiological samples,” Kessler says. “I don’t know anyone who covers this range, let alone someone who does so in a way that makes important contributions to each of these areas.” Nock’s graduate school adviser and mentor, Alan E. Kazdin, PhD, of Yale University, agrees that the MacArthur Foundation made a wise investment. “Matt can put ideas together in a comprehensive theory that most people would not ever think of doing,” says Kazdin. “He is the leading clinical psychologist in the country, and No. 2 is too far away to even see him.” n Click here to watch a MacArthur Foundation video about Nock’s research. Monitor on psychology • DeceMber 2011 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dcPYRH6zzg

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Monitor on Psychology - December 2011

Monitor on Psychology - December 2011
Letters
President’s Column
Contents
From the CEO
Willpower Pioneer Wins $100,000 Grawemeyer Prize
Single-Sex Schooling Called Into Question by Prominent Researchers
Maternal Depression Stunts Childhood Growth, Research Suggests
For Boys, Sharing May Seem Like a Waste of Time
Good News for Postdoc Applicants
In Brief
Treatment Guideline Development Now Under Way
Government Relations Update
Psychologist Named Va Mental Health Chief
The Limits of Eyewitness Testimony
Judicial Notebook
Random Sample
Time Capsule
Deconstructing Suicide
Questionnaire
A Focus on Interdisciplinarity
A Time of ‘Enormous Change’
The Science Behind Team Science
Good Science Requires Good Conflict
A New Paradigm of Care
Speaking of Education
Science Directions
New Labels, New Attitudes?
Psychologist Profile
Early Career Psychology
Unintended Consequences
Better Options for Troubled Teens
Saving Lives, One Organ at a Time
New Journal Editors
APA News
Division Spotlight
Guidelines for the Conduct of President-Elect Nominations and Elections
American Psychological Foundation
Personalities

Monitor on Psychology - December 2011

https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/apa/monitor_201206
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/apa/monitor_201205
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/apa/monitor_201204
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/apa/monitor_201203
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/apa/monitor_201202
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/apa/monitor_201201
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/apa/monitor_201112
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/apa/member_benefits
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/apa/monitor_201111
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/apa/monitor_201110
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/apa/monitor_201109_test
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/apa/monitor_201109
https://www.nxtbookmedia.com