Research

During my time at Notre Dame I primarily worked with Dr. Anita Kelly researching secret keeping and its effects.  I have also worked with Dr. John McIntosh at Indiana University-South Bend investigating guilt and grief in survivors of suicide and Dr. Nancy Stone at Creighton University studying teamwork.  Lastly, my senior honors thesis at Notre Dame was on positive and negative affect's impact on gambling behavior. As you can see, my research interests are quite broad, though my primary focus is suicide and its prevention.

While many people realize that suicide is a problem, few truly understand how large of a problem it is.  In 2005 in the United States, there was a completed suicide every 16.1 minutes, making for 32,637 suicides.  This makes suicide the 11th leading cause of death in the United States (homicide is 15th), and the 3rd leading cause of death among young people!  However, suicide does not occur in a vacuum, and it is estimated that each suicide affects at least 6 other people.  Based on that estimate, in 2005 completed suicides affected 228,459 people. 

This research is especially important for West Virginia.  In 2005, West Virginia reported 255 suicides ranking it as the 16th highest suicide rate in the United States.  While this is an important problem for all of us, it seems to be that much more significant to the people of West Virginia (as well as my home state of Colorado which has the 6th highest suicide rate).

The good news (and there is good news) is that help is out there everywhere if you want it.  If you feel like you or someone you know is in immediate danger, please call 911 immediately.  It is a completely appropriate use of 911.  If you or someone you know is not in immediate danger but you would like to talk with someone, call 1-800-273-TALK.  There are people there 24 hours a day who are trained to help, so please give them a chance!  There is so much help out there, please do not feel like it is hopeless, there is more hope than you know!

Special thanks to Dr. John McIntosh of Indiana University-South Bend for the statistics used above and for being an amazing mentor to me over the years!  For these stats and more visit Dr. McIntosh's website at http://mypage.iusb.edu/~jmcintos.