Grad student receives national award for research in clinical psychology

Edward A. “Eddie” Selby, who is pursuing his Ph.D. from Florida State’s Department of Psychology, has received a national award for his groundbreaking research. Selby, whose advisor is Lawton Professor Thomas Joiner, has received the 2011 award for “Distinguished Student Research in Clinical Psychology” from the American Psychological Association (APA).

Joiner expressed praise for what Selby has accomplished. “Like academic clinical psychology itself, this research award is extremely competitive,” Joiner said. “But Eddie obviously deserves it.  As a graduate student, he accomplished what many professors do not —a clear theoretical advance for an entire area of our field.”

Selby describes the work for which he won the award. “In my research, I have been primarily focused on generating and publishing my theory on emotional cascades, processes involved in self-sabotaging or self-destructive behaviors,” Selby said. “Emotional cascades are experiences where people will become extremely focused on ruminating on negative thoughts surrounding a problem, including past and future aspects of the problem, and this thinking becomes so intense and upsetting that they reach a state of unbearable psychological pain.

“As a result, they then engage in a self-sabotaging or self-destructive behavior such as drug or alcohol use, self-injury, aggressive behaviors, or dysregulated eating behaviors. These behaviors then provide strong physical sensations that distract from and short-circuit the emotional cascade, and as a result provide emotional relief to the person, but in a harmful way.”

Selby credits Joiner with giving him the skills needed to engage in cutting-edge research and the skills necessary to provide compassionate treatment to patients in a clinic, as well as with the support he needed to pursue a new theory.

“Dr. Joiner’s reaction to my theory when I first presented it to him was ‘Go for it!’ ” Selby said. “Some advisors might have suggested holding off on exploring a novel theory until later in my career and focusing on smaller, safer questions while a student, but Thomas agreed with me that the field was in need of a paradigm shift in order to help redirect the research in the area and potentially inspire other new directions.”

The award — given annually by the Society of Clinical Psychology — will be officially conferred at the APA convention in Washington, D.C. in August 2011. Selby, who plans to graduate from FSU that same month, is completing a yearlong residency at Brown University’s medical school and has accepted a tenure-track position at Rutgers University beginning in the fall.