Population Wellness Lab
The Population Wellness Lab, led by Dr. Christy Denckla, studies how adversity, including trauma, loss, and bereavement, affects mental health, physical health, and well-being. We are driven by the ultimate question: how do people adapt and recover from these adverse events? What is the difference between normal grief and pathological grief? How does loss shape our understanding of the world and ourselves? Ultimately, we aim to prevent trauma exposure as well as the subsequent cascade of physical and mental adverse effects at the population health level.
677 Huntington Avenue
Kresge Building, Room 706 Boston, MA 02115
Current Projects
We have received funding from the National Institute for Mental Health (1R01MH137201) to investigate the prevalence, risk, and protective factors for prolonged grief disorder, which was newly introduced in the most recent versions of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders (DSM) and International Classification of Diseases (ICD). This project is embedded within the Nurses’ Health Studies and Health Professionals Follow-Up Study, three national cohorts encompassing over 200,000 health professionals that have been followed biennially since the late 20th century.
This project seeks to document bereavement and mental health disparities among minoritized youth using the Adolescent Brain Cognitive DevelopmentSM (ABCD) Study, a longitudinal dataset of over 11,000 American adolescents. Supported by funding from The California Endowment and John W. Alden Trust, we will assess differences in the rates of bereavement by social factors including race/ethnicity, as well as mental health consequences of these adverse events.