...particularly worry, stress, and depression.  I have examined these problems from a perspective that highlights the importance of one’s ability to respond efficiently to emotional situations when they arise as well as one’s ability to manage resultant moods in effective rather than maladaptive ways.

My research is currently focused on:

(1) experimental delineation of multicomponential (i.e., subjective, physiological, neural, immunological) processes that contribute to emotion reactivity and dysregulation in generalized anxiety, major depression, and their co-occurrence; 

(2) development of Emotion Regulation Therapy (ERT), which integrates traditional and contemporary behavioral and experiential approaches into an affect science based framework; and

(3) examination of targeted biobehavioral mechanisms (i.e., attention regulation, metacognitive regulation, simultaneous exposure of reward and risk contexts) during ERT and briefer computerized targeted emotion regulation trainings to determine whether these mechanisms mediate symptomatic and functional outcome. 

I received my Ph.D. from Temple University in 2001 and, have since served on the faculty at New York University, Yale University, CUNY Hunter College, and currently Teachers College, Columbia University in the Clinical Psychology Department. While at Yale, I developed and directed the Yale Anxiety and Mood Services Clinic. At Hunter and now at Teachers College, I direct the Regulating Emotion in Anxiety and Depression (READ) Lab. I also currently serve on the editorial board of six journals including Journal of Abnormal Psychology and Behavior Therapy, the executive boards of the APA Division of Clinical Psychology and the Society for a Science of Clinical Psychology, and the Scientific Council of the Anxiety Disorders Association of America (ADAA).

...

In addition to my scholarly work, I have a private practice in midtown Manhattan.

Douglas S. Mennin, Ph.D.

Dr. Douglas Mennin obtained his Ph.D. in Psychology (Clinical) from Temple University in 2001. Since that time, he has held faculty positions at New York University, Yale University, and Hunter College of the City University of New York (CUNY). Currently, he serves on the faculty at Teachers College, Columbia University, where he directs the Regulating Emotion in Anxiety and Depression (READ) Lab. In these past 17 years, he has focused his research program on utilizing this affect science perspective to understand and treat anxiety and mood disorders, particularly in their most complex form - high levels of comorbidity, unyielding course, poor life satisfaction, refractory response to treatment - and to expand our knowledge of their etiology, development and maintenance across the lifespan.

While Dr. Mennin is interested in studying many forms of complex emotional disorders, generalized anxiety disorder (GAD; a disorder characterized by chronic worry and physical tension) and its co-occurrence with major depression (MDD) most clearly fit the goals of his research program. He has published extensively on the topic of GAD and is a co-editor of the authoritative book on the disorder, published by Guilford Press (Heimberg, Turk, & Mennin, 2004). He currently serves on the editorial board of six journals including Journal of Abnormal Psychology, Journal of Consulting Psychology, Brain and Behavior, the executive boards of the APA Division of Clinical Psychology and the Society for a Science of Clinical Psychology, and is a member of the prestigious New Research Symposium at the Anxiety and Depression Association of America conference. As an expert on these disorders, he is frequently sought out to consult in various media and events.

Dr. Mennin developed and empirically evaluated a theoretical model of the etiology and maintenance of GAD and MDD that implicates a central role for emotion regulation dysfunction. Given the refractory nature of these conditions, with approximately one-third to one-half remaining symptomatic even after treatment (Borkovec & Whisman, 1996), he and his collaborator, Dr. David Fresco at Kent State University, have worked extensively in developing an emotion regulation perspective on treatment of GAD and co-occurring MDD and have translated these ideas into an integrative yet mechanism-based approach called Emotion Regulation Therapy (ERT; Mennin & Fresco, 2009; Fresco, Mennin, et al., in press). A pilot study of ERT was previously conducted at Temple University and at the Yale Anxiety and Mood Services (YAMS), where Dr. Mennin was director, and is ongoing at Kent State and Teachers College.

For more information about Emotion Regulation Therapy, go to EmotionRegulationTherapy.com

For more information about Dr. Mennin's research, visit the READ Lab website at readlab.info.

For Dr. Mennin's page on the Teachers College Psychology Department website, click here.