Victoria Cosgrove

Biography

Dr. Victoria Cosgrove is a Clinical Assistant Professor in the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the Stanford University School of Medicine. She directs the Prevention and Intervention (PI) Laboratory, focused on studying stress and its involvement in the emergence of mood symptoms in adolescents and teens as well as developing clinical interventions that may help minimize negative responses to stress. She also directs the Family Clinic, which trains graduate students in psychology as well as psychiatry fellows in the specifics of family therapy. Dr. Cosgrove grew up on the East Coast and received her BA at Yale University in 1998. When she was a sophomore at Yale, she became a peer counselor and quickly made an easy decision to devote her career to supporting mental health. After receiving a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology and Behavioral Genetics from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 2009, she completed a Research Fellowship in child psychiatry at Stanford before joining the Faculty. She lives in Redwood City with her husband Brian and their three children, Zander, Aila, and Declan.

Research Interest

Dr. Victoria Cosgrove directs the Prevention and Intervention (PI) Laboratory, housed in the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, which investigates the etiology and treatment of affective psychopathology across the life span. Our mission is focused on two overarching aims: (1) to examine, using multilevel analysis (i.e., behavioral, genetic, immunological, etc.), stress-related etiological phenomena involved in the emergence of affective psychopathology in youth and adults within a diathesis-stress framework, and; (2) to develop and test the efficacy of evidence-based psychosocial and pharmacological interventions that promote arousal regulation and decreased inflammation. Our lab is comprised of ten doctoral candidates at the PGSP-Stanford Psy.D. Consortium, post-baccalaureate scholars, and Stanford undergraduates. Lab members routinely conduct sub-studies exploring important questions about roles for biological markers of inflammation, expressed emotion, personality factors, and neurocognitive functioning. The PI Lab has recently presented data at the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies (ABCT), Society for Personality Assessment (SPA), and Society for Affective Science Annual Meetings. We collaborate with Drs. Trisha Suppes and Michael Berk on a joint international project (R34 MH091284) with the University of Melbourne involving development and refinement of an internet-based intervention (MoodSwings) for adults with bipolar disorder (www.moodswings.net.au). The PI Lab also collaborates with Dr. Roger McIntyre at the University of Toronto on a joint international project, funded by the Stanley Medical Research Institute, investigating the efficacy of intravenous infliximab in the treatment of bipolar depression in adults.