Lab Members

Ilana Ladis is currently on internship at the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University. There, she treats postpartum depression and OCD as a therapist at the Women & Infants Day Hospital Program in Providence, RI. She is interested in the development of scalable digital mental health interventions and understanding proximal risk factors for suicide and other mental health problems.

My research interests encompass the use of mobile technologies (i.e., smartphones, wearable sensors) to better understand and treat emotional disorders such as anxiety and depression. I hope to identify objective markers of symptomatology in real-world contexts and leverage this data to develop and deliver just-in-time interventions via smartphones. I have a particular interest in using mobile interventions to make mental health care more accessible to those with limited resources and in adapting interventions for Latinx and youth populations.

My research interests include ways to adapt digital and mobile mental health interventions for anxiety and mood disorders to be more inclusive and accessible, including alongside active and passive sensing techniques in developing just-in-time adaptive interventions. I am particularly interested in developing scalable versions of these interventions including micro-sessions and single-session interventions, examining what the short-term benefits can be and how symptoms can be alleviated in-the-moment.

My research leverages tools from complex systems science and computational modeling to psychological problems like anxiety and loneliness. In particular, I am interested in identifying the dynamic interactions among psychological and social factors that contribute to these problems. To do so, I use experimental paradigms, real-time data collection methods (e.g., passive sensing technology; ecological momentary assessment), and computational modeling to iteratively develop, formalize, test, and refine psychological theories and examine how psychological processes unfold across timescales and contexts. I hope this work will advance our understanding of the mutually reinforcing interactions among components of complex systems that produce and reinforce states of mental disorder so that we may ultimately improve treatment.

I pursue two primary lines of research: the first is concerned with improving dissemination of and engagement with evidence-based digital mental health tools in community and health care settings. My research in this area explores collaborative and integrated care models, using qualitative and mixed methods that center patient experience and seek to understand real-world implementation hurdles. Secondly, I am interested in discerning the impact of minority stress on cognitive biases in anxious LGBTQ+ individuals. I hope to apply technology such as EMA (ecological momentary assessment) to better understand the day-to-day stressors impacting this population, with the ultimate goal of synthesizing scalable digital interventions to improve anxiety in LGBTQ+ individuals across the lifespan.