Around the turn of the century, psychology professors from around the country came together to create Project Implicit Mental Health. The effort, in part, lead to the creation of a website where individuals take a short test and receive feedback about their own subconscious reactions to mental health topics, including depression, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.
One of the principal founders of the project was University Psychology Prof. Brian Nosek, who partnered with Dr. Bethany Teachman, also a University psychology professor, in 2011 to bring the site to the University.
University graduate student Alex Werntz is continuing her research in the clinical psychology program by working with Teachman.
“Prof. Teachman and her colleagues have been investigating implicit associations relating to mental health for many years, and her research has led to advances in our understanding of different disorders, including anxiety disorders,” Werntz said.
Teachmans’ laboratory is still conducting research, but data collected so far shows that explicit and implicit associations are often not congruent.
“For example, within the anxiety, depression, alcohol use and eating disorder domains, we have found there are only small to moderate relationships between our automatic and explicitly-reported associations,” Werntz said.
Werntz said she believes the study is crucial in the potential influence on the mental health treatment.
“The findings will be used to better understand how we think about and understand mental illness, and how to treat it,” she said. “Understanding how people automatically pair concepts in mind will allow us to create more effective treatments for individuals suffering from mental health difficulties.”
In addition, the website includes a page with mental health resources to guide individuals toward seeking appropriate help for mental health issues.
“Unfortunately, many still think of receiving talk therapy as shameful,” Werntz said. “One purpose of the website is to allow individuals to learn about their own thoughts about these topics, and maybe realize that mental health issues are not as scary or as uncommon as they seem. Hopefully this will allow people to introspect and maybe change their mental illness-related beliefs.”
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