Courtney Beard, PhD
Director, Cognition and Affect Research and Education (CARE) Laboratory
- Associate Professor of Psychology, Department of Psychiatry
Biography
Courtney Beard, PhD, is an associate professor of psychology in the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and director of the Cognition and Affect Research and Education (CARE) Laboratory at McLean Hospital.
Dr. Beard’s research aims to delineate cognitive and affective mechanisms underlying psychiatric disorders and to develop treatments to target these mechanisms. She is a clinical psychologist with expertise in anxiety disorders and cognitive behavior therapy.
Dr. Beard’s Cognition and Affect Research and Education (CARE) lab conducts research to develop mechanism-driven, scalable, and accessible interventions for emotional disorders and methods to deliver these interventions in real-world settings.
The lab’s work is guided by patients’ perspectives and feedback, and by the conviction that mental health care must not only be available to all people, but developed in collaboration with people of the communities they seek to serve. Therefore, the team is also committed to training a diverse next generation of mental health researchers and disseminating science findings back to participants, community members, and the general public.
One of the lab’s main focuses is on interpretation bias in emotional disorders. Daily life constantly requires the resolution of ambiguity. For example, not getting a job or a friend not returning a call can be interpreted in multiple ways. The way in which individuals automatically resolve the countless such ambiguous situations encountered each day has a large impact on their affect and behavior.
Interpretation bias, the tendency to resolve ambiguity negatively, is a crucial therapeutic target due to its causal maintaining role in emotional disorders. Theoretical models propose that interpretation bias maintains a vicious cycle in which an individual experiences the world as more hopeless or threatening—which heightens negative affect—increases behavioral avoidance and more biased cognition.
The CARE lab conducts studies testing digital interventions that target interpretation bias, as well as other important mechanisms underlying emotional disorders.
Read the CARE lab’s mental health articles in Psychology Today.
- Nader Amir, PhD, San Diego State University
- Tom Armstrong, PhD, Whitman College
- Justin T. Baker, MD, PhD, McLean Hospital
- Kean Hsu, PhD, University of Texas
- Wendy Lichenthal, PhD, Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
- R. Kathryn McHugh, PhD, McLean Hospital
- Michael Treadway, PhD, Emory University
- Christian A. Webb, PhD, McLean Hospital
- Risa B. Weisberg, PhD, Boston VA/Boston University Medical Center
Beard C, Amir, N. A multi-session interpretation modification program: changes in interpretation and social anxiety symptoms. Behaviour Research and Therapy. 2008;46(10):1135-41.
Beard C, Sawyer AT, Hofmann SG. Efficacy of attention bias modification using threat and appetitive stimuli: a meta-analytic review. Behavior Therapy. 2012;43(4):724-40.
Beard C, Millner A, Forgeard MJC, Fried EI, Hsu KJ, Treadway M, Leonard CV, Kertz S, Björgvinsson T. Network analysis of depression and anxiety symptom relationships in a psychiatric sample. Psychological Medicine. 2016;46(16):3359-3369.
Education & Training
- 2003 BS, University of Georgia
- 2008 PhD, University of Georgia
- 2007 Pre-Doctoral Internship, Brown Medical School
- 2010 Post-Doctoral Fellowship, Brown Medical School
