Kristen Abraham, PhD

Abraham is a professor and department chairperson of psychology at the University of Detroit Mercy. She also holds an appointment at the Veterans Health Administration Serious Mental Illness Treatment Resource and Evaluation Center.

Tell us a bit about your background: What is your area of research? What is your most recent journal-editing experience?

I am a clinical-community psychologist and mental health services researcher, having completed a PhD in clinical psychology with a concentration in community psychology at Bowling Green State University and a postdoctoral fellowship in mental health services research at the University of Michigan’s Department of Psychiatry and the VA Serious Mental Illness Treatment Resource and Evaluation Center. During my training, I provided psychiatric rehabilitation services in clinical settings, including outpatient clinics within the Veterans Health Administration and at a clubhouse.

Broadly, my work to improve the lives of people with serious mental health conditions focuses on the following domains: employment, health and health care systems, peer support, and families. I conduct traditional research aimed at producing generalizable knowledge in addition to program evaluation and implementation, applying rigorous research methods to improve health care more directly. I use descriptive, survey, and epidemiological methodologies as well as interviews and focus groups. I frequently integrate quantitative and qualitative approaches and value interdisciplinary collaborations.

My editorial experience includes serving on the editorial boards of Psychiatric Rehabilitation Journal (PRJ), Psychological Services, Teaching of Psychology, and Journal of Family Theory & Review.

My training, scholarship across different domains of psychiatric rehabilitation, experience with diverse research methodologies, service on PRJ’s and other editorial boards, and commitment to persons with serious psychiatric disabilities will inform my editorship of PRJ.

Why is this journal important for the field? What is its relevance to society/public health? What are the hot issues in your area right now? What challenges, if any, lie ahead for the field?

PRJ is the only APA journal with a particular focus on persons with psychiatric disabilities and is the official journal of the Boston University Center for Psychiatric Rehabilitation and the Psychiatric Rehabilitation Association. Persons with serious mental illness face a number of challenges, including lower rates of employment, increased risk of mortality (generally because of physical health conditions), loneliness, and involvement with the justice system. PRJ publishes research focused on helping persons with psychiatric disabilities to access valued social roles and live full and meaningful lives within communities of their choosing.

Although a number of established practices are known to promote good outcomes for persons with psychiatric disabilities, the challenges faced by this population remain. Practitioners in the field of psychiatric rehabilitation must work to ensure that psychiatric rehabilitative services are culturally relevant, accessible to the people who need them, and reflective of the lived experiences of persons with psychiatric disabilities. Facilitating access to culturally relevant services involves conducting foundational research on the effectiveness and efficacy of established practices in diverse samples, adapting and tailoring existing services to better meet the needs of diverse populations, and delivering such services in a manner that reduces existing health care disparities. Promoting service accessibility entails putting research findings into practice, ensuring that a trained workforce is available to provide services, and aligning policies and funding. Reflecting the lived experience of persons with psychiatric disabilities requires the incorporation of the perspectives of persons with lived experience across all phases of research and program delivery. I will endeavor to publish research in PRJ that addresses all of these critical issues.

Do you have plans for a special issue or changes to the editorial process? Have you introduced or are you planning to introduce any changes? Briefly, what are your main priorities?

In collaboration with associate editors, Adrienne Lapidos, PhD, (University of Michigan) and Elizabeth C. Thomas, PhD, (Temple University), I put forth a call for papers for a special issue on the past, present, and future of psychiatric rehabilitation. We are hoping to stimulate a conversation about the future of the field and how the challenges I have articulated will be addressed while also honoring, summarizing, and building on past accomplishments.

Because both Lapidos and Thomas have expertise in early episode psychosis, we are considering a special issue on this topic, with a call for papers planned for the spring or summer of 2025. A good deal of research has been conducted on care for persons with early episode psychosis, but little has been discussed from a psychiatric rehabilitation perspective. We are hoping that this special issue can begin to fill that gap.

Although I have maintained much of the journal scope established by PRJ’s prior editor, Sandra G. Resnick, PhD, (Yale University), I have also made some modifications. First, I am prioritizing community-engaged and qualitative studies to promote the perspectives of persons with lived experience with psychiatric disabilities within research. Second, I am encouraging the submission of review articles. Review articles are vital: They summarize large bodies of work in a digestible manner; can make clear what findings are well-established versus novel; and point to gaps in the available research, thereby directing the field into promising areas of inquiry. The work of researching and writing review articles can also be conducted with fewer resources than are needed for studies that involve original data collection and therefore can be practicable and useful ways for new scholars to establish themselves. Last, I hope to encourage researchers to submit articles related to the implementation of psychiatric rehabilitation into practice. Such studies may include rigorous analyses of policies or the practice of psychiatric rehabilitation in nontraditional contexts (e.g., criminal justice settings).

In terms of changes to editorial processes, the editorial team and I are asking that authors and editors pay special attention to APA’s Journal Article Reporting Standards for Race, Ethnicity, and Culture (Jars–Rec). These guidelines are important for promoting greater transparency and methodological rigor with regard to Rec in psychological research. We selected specific Jars–Rec elements to focus on. These are listed on the PRJ website (see the EDI Efforts drop-down text) and include attention to explicit communication about how Rec were considered in the research design, adequate description of REC characteristics in the method and statistical analyses, and careful consideration of Rec in the discussion of findings.

What advice would you offer new authors hoping to publish in your journal?

Submissions from new authors are welcome! I encourage new authors to carefully review the submission guidelines on the PRJ website . Reading recent PRJ articles and sample articles will also help new authors to envision the structure of articles and how data can be presented. If new authors have questions that cannot be answered by information on the PRJ website, they should reach out to me with inquiries .