Fighting to combat America's mental health crisis

Wyman is a doctoral student in Notre Dame’s quantitative psychology program. The program trains students in statistical methods, quantitative models, and data science that can be applied to psychological research or methods development.

Wyman explained, “In biology and physics you have a lot of direct measurements, like you can see phenomena in the natural world and measure it. In psychology, we don’t have that luxury. We work with something called latent variables, which are variables that cannot be directly observed. And because they can’t be directly observed, you sort of have to tease them out in order to get the information you need from them, like you can’t look at something and say, that’s depression. No, you have to use indicators to understand that it’s depression,” he said, adding that signs such as irritability, low energy, and moodiness help indicate depression, but they aren’t certainties.

Wyman’s research involves using existing psychological questionnaires that help with diagnoses, and then applying artificial intelligence and machine learning to create new measurement tools to help streamline some of those subjective processes.

“The better measurement we have for things that we can’t see for the human mind, the better the research questions, the better the results, and just overall the faster the community moves,” he added.

He’s also working on a project to develop a psychological assessment that could identify police officer candidates who are less likely to commit misconduct. The research has captured his interest, and he’s hoping, at the end of his five-year program, to transition into an academic research career himself.

“I think it takes a certain amount of creativity to be involved in research, to see what has already been put out there and figure out what’s missing. It’s really satisfying to sort of fit in those missing puzzle pieces. It requires a lot of problem-solving,” he said. “Being able to think of my field and come up with new solutions that nobody else has thought of before, I think it could be really rewarding.”

A key piece of the University’s Health and Well-Being Initiative, the clinic will increase the number of senior faculty in Notre Dame’s Department of Psychology, triple the number of clinical psychology graduate students, and triple the experiential learning opportunities for undergraduate psychology majors. It will also include the installation of a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine, which will significantly enhance the University’s neuroscience research across campus.

The result will be a clinic that provides both research and service to offer a robust, comprehensive approach to mental care and support that will make a difference on campus, in the community, and beyond.

“At Notre Dame, we are challenged and empowered every day to use our research to be a force for good in the world,” Mustillo said. “I am forever grateful for the opportunity the Veldman Family Psychology Clinic presents to us to help heal a world deeply in need.”

What’s more, Mustillo sees the clinic’s reach extending far beyond South Bend, both by educating new clinicians and by disseminating evidence-based research.

“It will elevate the level of care across the community—not just the people that have access to our clinic, but the people that go to their local therapists,” she said. “We will provide training to the local therapists so they will have access to cutting-edge, evidence-based care that they might not have otherwise.”

Wyman echoed her sentiments. Notre Dame’s desire to share all that it learns, all that it creates, all that it has, is what brought him here in the first place.

“When I was looking for universities, what appealed most to me about Notre Dame was its Catholic mission. They are defined by the statement ‘here for each other and here for the world.’ Notre Dame had so many resources to support its own student body, but also was matched with the research and the passion to take the goodness that it created and give it to every corner of the world,” Wyman said. “I saw an opportunity to pursue mental health research that affected not just my peers, but also people in the corners of the earth that may not have access to mental health care.”