Over the past several years, I have worked on developing and testing the efficacy of a new treatment for depression called Positive Psychotherapy (PPT). Based on Seligman's theory of happiness, we aim to increase pleasure, engagement and meaning using a variety of different exercises targeted at one or more of these.

I have conducted two randomized controlled studies examining the efficacy of PPT in group format for decreasing depressive symptoms and have found the same thing in both cases: people who receive PPT on average report fewer depressive symptoms and greater life satisfaction compared to a no-treatment control group. A writeup of the first of these two studies recently appeared in American Psychologist (click here to download) along with a study by my colleague, Tayyab Rashid, in which he used individual PPT in patients diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder (MDD).

More recently, my interests have turned towards designing and testing larger-scale happiness-increasing interventions for the general population. I am currently running two studies testing the efficacy of web-based interventions for increasing happiness and decreasing depressive symptoms: the first is examining 14 individual exercises, and the second is testing "packages" of 2, 4, and 6 exercises. I am also interested in understanding the mechanisms by which these exercises work, and am planning several smaller studies examining when, and in whom, each exercise is most effective.

A bit more about me: I am currently working with Martin Seligman, a strong proponent of Positive Psychology. The work that he and his colleagues have done on the prevention of depression and anxiety was an important influence in the development of my interests.

I got my BA in Psychology at Reed College in Portland, OR in 2003. My undergraduate thesis advisor, Keith Herman, is responsible for teaching me the fundamentals of the research that I do today. Although you probably can't tell from my research interests, I am very concerned with the eventual implementation of the interventions I am working on. That is all Keith's fault! :) And Michael Blank only fostered these scandalous Community Psychology-esque tendencies in his 709 course on the subject!

More recently, I got my MA in Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania; this happens automatically en route to the Ph.D. (we do a first-year project that is basically like a Masters thesis as sort of a rite of passage), but people ooh and ahh when you say you have an MA so I felt inclined to mention it.