Steven Brunwasser
Rowan University, NJ·Psychology
Depression is common on college campuses, and neurodivergent students, those whose brains work differently, for example with autism or ADHD, report especially high symptoms and low satisfaction with mental health services. The move to college is a stressful transition.
- Fields
Psychology
Public Health & Epidemiology
- Topics
depression
neurodivergent students
neurodiversity
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Aug 2029
What they work on
- Identify factors that cause or buffer depressive symptoms in incoming neurodivergent college students, adding 3 survey waves (375 participants) to the 2m2x College Health biweekly cohort study across 4 universities.
- Apply causal-inference methods, including marginal structural models and G-methods, to estimate effects on mood while reducing biases such as collider stratification bias.
- Explore unique stressors and barriers to mental health services through focus groups co-led by neurodivergent student research partners, and merge the qualitative and survey findings.
- Build a two-semester undergraduate course sequence in preventative mental health care where students analyze anonymized real-world prevention data and design campus interventions.
More about the research
Understanding what drives or protects against depression during it could help campuses design prevention programs that actually fit these students.
Why it matters
Neurodivergent college students face a high burden of depression and are often poorly served by campus mental health services. By identifying the processes that raise or buffer depression risk as they start college, this work could inform tailored, acceptable prevention programs on college campuses. It also trains undergraduates for healthcare careers.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Julia Rosenberg
Yale University, CT·Public Health & Epidemiology·Early-career
Determine whether state-level expansions of health insurance eligibility are associated with changes in children's insurance enrollment and preventive care, using repeated National Survey of Children's Health data.
Audrey Pettifor
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, NC·Public Health & Epidemiology
Test whether the longitudinal link between childhood adversity and depression differs by cash transfer exposure, using HPTN 068 trial data on 2,533 rural South African girls and Child Support Grant data from the Agincourt surveillance system.
Erin Vogel
University of Oklahoma-Health Sciences Center, OK·Psychology·Early-career
Characterize what kinds of social media content prompt social comparison among teens aged 13–18, using screenshots and surveys sent from a smartphone app during everyday life (ecological momentary assessment).
The school
Rowan University: 7 labs on PI Pages, $64M a year on research, 69 research doctorates a year.
Reach out
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