Melissa Sitton, Tina Du Rocher Schudlich, Christina Byrne, Chase M. Ochrach, and Seneca E. A. Erwin received the 2020 Outstanding Scholar Award for Quantitative or Qualitative Research for their article, “Family Functioning and Self-Injury in Treatment-Seeking Adolescents: Implications for Counselors.”
Melissa Sitton, MS, is currently a doctoral student studying clinical psychology at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. She earned her BA in psychology and individual and family development from Seattle Pacific University, and her MS in experimental psychology from Western Washington University. Her research interests include experiences of stress and interpersonal violence in adolescence and young adulthood, and factors that might exacerbate or ameliorate outcomes following those stressful events.
Tina Du Rocher Schudlich, PhD, MHP, is a professor of psychology at Western Washington University. She serves as the director for the Psychology Department’s Counseling Training Clinic, where she oversees graduate counseling students providing free counseling services to community members. Her research interests examine the role of parent and family processes in the development, maintenance, and treatment of psychopathology in children. Areas of specific focus include understanding reciprocal relations between mood disorders and families’ well-being and the role of parent participation in treatment for youth self-harm and autism spectrum disorder. Another emerging area of her research explores barriers and ways to increase access to mental health treatment for culturally and linguistically diverse youth and their family. She incorporates multi-method approaches to her research and is especially fond of qualitative methods, such as behavioral observations, interviews, and diary methods.
Christina A. Byrne, PhD, is an associate professor in the psychology department at Western Washington University, in Bellingham, Washington, where she serves as Director of the Clinical Mental Health Counseling Program. Dr. Byrne’s research interests include psychological trauma and interpersonal violence. (Dr. Byrne is not pictured above.)
Chase M. Ochrach, MS, is finishing her third year in the counseling psychology doctoral program at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She earned her bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and her master’s in clinical mental health counseling from Western Washington University. Ochrach currently works with adjudicated youth at Mendota Juvenile Treatment Center in Madison, Wisconsin, and with veterans at the Zablocki VA Medical Center in Milwaukee. She recently proposed her dissertation study, titled Boy’s Search for Meaning: Meaning Making as a Predictor of Trajectories of Adaptation in Formerly Incarcerated Youth. She hopes to continue with research and clinical work with forensic juvenile populations and will be applying to clinical internships this year.
Seneca E. A. Erwin, MA, recently received her master’s in educational psychology from the University of Northern Colorado. She works in the recruiting sphere at a Fortune 500 technology company. Her research interests focus on social justice, domestic violence, mindfulness, and play therapy.
Read more about the TPC scholarship awards here.
