The University of Rhode Island College of Health Sciences continues to strengthen its roster of faculty members in the Department of Psychology by adding Christopher Beevers as the Prochaska Endowed Professor of Individual and Population Health and director of graduate studies.
Beevers worked at the University of Texas (UT) at Austin from 2005-26. His most recent roles at UT Austin were professor and director of graduate studies.
At UT, Beevers secured more than $21.5 million in research grants for 20 projects, he has 230 scholarly works published in 138 distinct outlets, and earned more than a dozen honors and awards, including the Silver Spurs Centennial Teaching Fellowship, the Raymond Dickson Centennial Endowed Teaching Fellowship, an Association for Psychological Science Fellowship, and the Independent Investigator Award from the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation.
“Chris excels in every realm of our work,” said David Schnyer, chair of URI’s Department of Psychology. “He is a leading research scientist studying mood disorders, a spectacular teacher who has won numerous prestigious teaching awards, and an excellent departmental citizen who contributes wherever he can with care, conscientiousness, and a spirit of service.”
Beevers’ research focuses on understanding why people develop psychological disorders, with an emphasis on depression and other affective disorders, and on using technology to help people feel better.
“My lab’s work centers on digital health—using technology to better assess and treat psychopathology, particularly depression,” said Beevers. “Traditional mental health assessment relies on asking people how they have been feeling over the past two weeks, which can be imprecise given that it relies on memory. Smartphones, wearables, and other digital tools let us measure mood, sleep, and behavior as they unfold in daily life, which gives a much richer picture of who is struggling and when.”
Beevers believes technology can serve as a tool help people in real time with depression when a clinician may not be immediately available to treat them.
“Digital interventions are one of the few approaches that can realistically scale to meet that need,” said Beevers. “We are working on how to deliver these treatments effectively, and how to match the right person to the right treatment, rather than treating depression as one uniform condition.”
Earlier this year, Beevers published the results of a study that examined how veterans with depressive symptoms engaged with Deprexis, a self-guided internet-delivered cognitive behavioral therapy program, to inform strategic implementation within Veterans Health Administration care systems. The article appeared in the August issue of the journal Psychiatry Research.
Beevers looks forward to collaborating with others at URI on digital health research.
“I want to build out a digital mental health research program here and connect it to what is already happening across the College of Health Sciences,” said Beevers.
As the department’s director of graduate studies, Beevers is excited to help students attain the skills they need to achieve success.
“A significant part of my job at URI is helping to train the next generation of behavioral and clinical scientists alongside my faculty colleagues—making sure our students leave with the research skills, clinical skills, and technical fluency that this field increasingly demands,” said Beevers. “If I can help make URI a place that people associate with rigorous digital mental health research, I will consider that a success.”
The Prochaska Endowed Professorship is named after former URI psychology professor James O. Prochaska, a preeminent clinical psychologist and world-class researcher. In his 50 years of service at URI, which began in 1969, Prochaska was awarded more than $80 million in research grants, authored more than 400 publications, and was the first psychologist to win a Medal of Honor for Clinical Research from the American Cancer Society.