Erin A. Kaufman, PhD

Erin Kaufman, PhD, Assistant Professor (Clinical), earned a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology from Whitman College and MS and PhD degrees in Clinical Psychology at the University of Utah, where she worked with Dr. Sheila Crowell and specialized in the Clinical Child and Family Track of that department. She went on to complete her psychology internship at Western Psychiatric Institute at the University of Pittsburg Medical Center, before completing a T32 psychology research fellowship there. She served as Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Western Ontario from 2019 until 2022. Dr. Kaufman’s research focuses on interrupting pathogenic factors that contribute to self-inflicted injury (SII), borderline personality disorder (BPD), and suicide. She uses the developmental psychopathology perspective as a framework for conceptualizing and studying these complex problems. Her work builds on existing research that identifies both (a) markers of biological vulnerability to SII and BPD, and (b) environmental risk factors (e.g., coercive family processes, emotion invalidation) that shape vulnerabilities into more advanced and difficult-to-treat patterns of stress reactivity over time. She incorporates biological, self- and informant-report, behavioral, and ecological momentary assessment methods into her research designs. Dr. Kaufman is also part of the multi-disciplinary team at the Huntsman Mental Health Institute’s Youth Residential Treatment program.