Jami F. Young

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Jami F. Young, PhD

Associate Chair of Research

Dr. Young is a clinical psychologist whose research focuses on the identification, prevention, and treatment of adolescent depression. Her scholarship is driven by the need to understand what factors predispose youth to depression and the desire to develop, study, and disseminate interventions to help address the unmet needs of youth with mental health problems.

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Bio

Dr. Young is a clinical psychologist with expertise in psychological interventions for preventing and treating adolescent depression. She is an Associate Chair of Research in the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, faculty lead of PolicyLab's Behavioral Health portfolio, and director/PI of the Adolescent Depression Prevention and Treatment (ADePT) Lab at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.

She has received funding from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) for her research on Interpersonal Psychotherapy–Adolescent Skills Training (IPT-AST), a group preventive intervention for adolescent depression which targets interpersonal vulnerabilities for depression. She has conducted three randomized controlled trials of IPT-AST delivered in schools and has examined the effects of this program on a variety of mental health, interpersonal, and school-related outcomes.

Currently, Dr. Young has a collaborative R01 to conduct a personalized prevention study to examine whether the effects of depression prevention programs can be maximized by matching youth to programs based on their vulnerabilities for depression.

Dr. Young's research has also included the study of risk factors for later psychopathology. She was the principal investigator of a collaborative R01 longitudinal study of genetic, cognitive, and interpersonal risk factors for youth depression. Most recently, she has begun to examine the identification and management of adolescent depression in primary care settings.

In addition to her research, Dr. Young has been involved in national and international efforts to train community clinicians in evidence-based prevention and treatment interventions for adolescent depression. Taken together, Dr. Young's work aims to decrease the incidence of adolescent depression and increase children's access to evidence-based assessment, prevention, and treatment of depression and other behavioral health conditions.