Paola Pedrelli, Ph.D.
Director of Dual Diagnoses Studies at the Depression Clinical Research Program; Principal Investigator; Assistant Professor of Psychology, Harvard Medical School
Dr. Pedrelli is a clinical psychologist with expertise in comorbid disorders. She received her Ph.D in Clinical Psychology from the Joint Doctoral Program at the University of California San Diego and San Diego State University and completed her post-doctoral work at MGH. Her program of research focuses on explicating the etiology of co-occurring Mood Disorders and Alcohol Use Disorders and on developing psychosocial treatments for these conditions. She has been awarded funding from Harvard Medical School, the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, and the ABMRF/The Foundation for Alcohol Research. Her current work includes a study examining the effectiveness of a novel psychosocial intervention for heavy drinking and depressive symptoms in college students, and a multi-method study investigating positive and negative reinforcement processes at the bases of binge drinking. She has published and presented extensively on the co-occurrence of depressive symptoms and substance use among college students. She is an expert in the delivery of CBT and developed several CBT-based treatment manuals for patients with co-occurring disorders.