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Kim L. Gratz, PhD
Research Assistant Professor, Director, Personality Disorders Research Clinical
E-mail: kgratz@psyc.umd.edu
Center for Addictions, Personality, and Emotion Research (CAPER) |
Research and Teaching Interests:
Background Information:
Dr. Gratz received her PhD in Clinical Psychology from the University of Massachusetts Boston in 2003. After being awarded the Psychosocial Fellowship from McLean Hospital/Harvard Medical School in July 2003, she served as a Clinical and Research Fellow at McLean from 2003-2005. She recently joined the Clinical Psychology Program at the University of Maryland as Research Assistant Professor and Director of Personality Disorders Research within Dr. Lejuez’s Basic Processes in Addictive Behaviors Laboratory. In 2005, she was awarded the Young Investigator’s Award of the National Education Alliance for Borderline Personality Disorder.
Research Interests:
Dr. Gratz’s clinical and research interests focus on the role of emotion dysregulation and experiential avoidance in borderline personality disorder (BPD) and deliberate self-harm. In particular, her research focuses on understanding the nature and consequences of emotional dysregulation and avoidance in BPD and self-harm (through the use of novel behavioral/experimental paradigms), and applying this understanding to the development of more effective treatments for these conditions. Recent projects include: (1) the development of a research program to assess the effectiveness of the Borderline Center, McLean Hospital’s specialty clinical services for BPD; (2) the development of a short-term, acceptance-based, emotion regulation group intervention for deliberate self-harm among women with BPD; and (3) an experimental investigation of the nature of emotion dysregulation in BPD.