Elizabeth Flanagan, PhD
Assistant Professor, Yale Program for Recovery and Community Health
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Elizabeth.Flanagan@Yale.edu Phone: 203.764.7592 Fax: 203.764.7595 Program for Recovery & Community Health Department of Psychiatry Yale University School of Medicine 319 Peck Street, Bldg. One New Haven, CT 06513 |
Profile:
Currently, I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine. I recently received a K01 award to receive public health training and to study stigma in mental health settings.
Role in Program:
Assistant Professor
Professional Interests:
My current research interests focus on stigma in mental health settings. I recently received a 3-year K01 award to conduct a multi-method assessment of stigma in mental health settings. The goals of this research are: 1) To empirically test a theoretically-based, comprehensive public health model of stigma in mental health settings using established measures to determine the aspects of stigma that are most important in mental health settings and, using experimental vignettes, to manipulate a variable in this model (i.e., attributions about the causes of mental illness) to observe its effects on other model variables, 2) To use a laboratory-based behavioral paradigm to experimentally test whether peer professionals elicit less anxiety but higher ratings of effectiveness and likability than credentialed professionals, and 3) To use qualitative research methods to understand the social context of mental health settings and the lived experience of consumers and clinicians in mental health settings in order to enhance the understanding of the empirical results from the earlier studies.
Overall, my research program focuses broadly on the classification of mental disorders and people’s perceptions of mental disorders. Past research has used anthropological theory and cognitive psychological methods to uncover the natural classification systems (i.e., taxonomies) of mental disorders that people develop as a result of personal experience with people with mental disorders. This research could help develop a diagnostic manual of mental disorders that more accurately reflects people with mental disorders and is more useful to people who are trying to help them. Also, this research could help improve the social inclusion and decrease stigma against people with mental illness.
Currently, I am also interested in people’s subjective experience of mental illness and the relationship between these subjective experiences and the depiction of disorders in the DSM. I am currently developing a research program to study people’s subjective experience of mental illness with the goal of using this information to improve the validity of DSM criteria.
Other interests include the sociology of science (i.e., how social and political forces affect the scientific process), cross-cultural research (especially as it applies to classification and diagnosis), diagnostic decision-making (especially gender bias in diagnosis), and personality disorders (especially classification and assessment).
Personal Interests:
When not working, I stay very busy chasing around my twin two-year-olds with my husband Ed. Baby #3 is on the way in September 2008. We love being outside at the park, on the beach, or even in our own backyard. I also sing professionally in the early music Schola at St. Mary’s Church in New Haven and with the Saint Gregory Society.
Examples of tabletop taxonomies from Flanagan, E.H., Keeley, J., & Blashfield, R.K. An alternative hierarchical organization of the mental disorders of DSM-IV. Journal of Abnormal Psychology. In press.
Examples of merge-sort taxonomies from Flanagan, E.H., Keeley, J., & Blashfield, R.K. An alternative hierarchical organization of the mental disorders of DSM-IV. Journal of Abnormal Psychology. In press.
