Published in , the study tracked 355 adults (including 202 creative practitioners and 153 comparison participants with lower creative engagement) across baseline measures and 13 daily surveys of creativity and multidimensional well-being.

“Creative professionals are often under intense pressure—to perform, to produce, and to evaluate their own work,” said Jennifer Drake, professor of Psychology at ������Ƶ and the CUNY Graduate Center and the study’s senior author. “This study shows why blanket claims like ‘creativity is always good for you’ miss important nuance. Creativity tends to lift well-being in the moment for everyone, but the day-after pattern can diverge in ways that matter for mental health support and creative-arts interventions.”

“Creativity is usually framed as a straightforward path to feeling better,” said , lead author and a doctoral candidate in Psychology at the . “What surprised us is that for creative practitioners, there can be a next-day emotional cost—even when the same-day effects are positive. That doesn’t mean creativity is harmful; it suggests the emotional rhythm of creative work may be different when creating is central to your life and livelihood.”

The research uses the PERMA model of well-being—Positive emotions, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, and Accomplishment—to move beyond one-size-fits-all ideas about “happiness” and capture how creativity relates to specific facets of flourishing over time.

Key Findings

• Creativity helped people feel better that same day. On days when participants were more creative, they reported higher well-being across multiple areas.
• Creative practitioners started out with higher well-being. They reported higher baseline well-being, especially in feeling absorbed/engaged, connected to others, and having a sense of meaning.
• The next-day effects differed. Casual creators tended to carry benefits into the next day (better mood and relationships), while creative practitioners reported more negative emotions the next day after higher creativity — the “creative hangover.”
• Feeling worse predicted next-day creativity only for casual creators. In the comparison group, lower well-being was linked to more creativity the following day; this pattern did not show up for creative practitioners.

Why It Matters

The findings complicate the familiar “tortured artist” narrative. Creativity appears to offer immediate well-being benefits across the board, but the timing and emotional spillover may depend on whether someone creates professionally or more casually—a difference that could inform wellness strategies, clinical approaches, and future intervention studies.

The post Creativity Feels Great — Until Tomorrow appeared first on ������Ƶ.

Most recently, Delamater co-authored (with Michael Domjan) an undergraduate textbook, The Essentials of Conditioning and Learning, and he concluded his tenure as editor-in-chief of the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Learning and Cognition, where he helped shape the direction of the field by guiding rigorous, theory-driven empirical research to publication. Delamater reflected on his scientific journey, his perspective on the evolution of animal learning research, and the insights gained from years at the editorial helm of one of his discipline’s leading journals.

You started at ������Ƶ in 1994. What drew you to teaching psychology here?

I saw in ������Ƶ opportunities to develop a productive research program along with highly motivated students who possess the curiosity and eagerness to learn more about how the world works. In addition, I was attracted to the Psychology Department because it housed several key senior faculty members who not only expressed the types of academic values that I shared but who also had already developed inspiring careers of their own. I knew there was a great deal I could learn from each of them.

Your work has long combined traditional behaviorist methods with more recent neurobiological tools and computational modeling approaches to understanding basic learning processes. How has your thinking about what animals “know” or represent internally changed over the course of your career?

I’ve always found the question of knowledge representation a fascinating one to study scientifically. My adventure began with a simple question about how anticipations might influence perceptual experiences. If I’m thinking about something very sweet, for example, does that thought of sweetness make me perceive the beverage I happen to be consuming in the moment as being sweeter than it really is? There is plenty of evidence in nonhumans and humans alike that the answer to this question is yes. So, how does that work?

When I first came to ������Ƶ, I approached this sort of question at a purely psychological level of analysis. When something makes us “think” of sweetness, for instance, the simple answer is that we imagine something sweet and that activates in the mind’s eye some incipient perceptual representation of the thing that we previously experienced as being sweet. Thoughts can activate perceptual representations.

Over the course of my career, I have become increasingly interested in understanding neurobiological mechanisms of basic learning processes. We now have tools that allow us to measure neural activity patterns in various brain regions when we instruct a rodent to anticipate sugar water. We can then ask whether that pattern of activity resembles what occurs when the sugar water is itself presented.

But my interest in knowledge representation goes beyond neural activity patterns with sweet rewards. We also try to devise fairly simple neural network models that simulate how a brain can learn to anticipate something and how complexities in that network might give rise to more sophisticated, context-specific forms of knowledge (e.g., the word “apple” means one thing when we think about food, but something quite different when we think about the classic rock band The Beatles and Apple Corps.). How does the brain encode context-dependent forms of knowledge? We try to approach these questions at multiple levels of analysis—from neurons to behavior to perceptions to computational systems.

Comparative psychology asks us to look across species to understand learning and behavior. What have nonhuman animals taught you that you think is especially relevant to understanding human cognition?

Psychologists have long understood that very simple nonlinguistic processes—ones we are often unaware of—can go a long way toward explaining how our minds work. Humans use language to great effect, but research has shown time and again that humans are notoriously bad at explaining the origins of their own thoughts, memories, feelings, and emotions. Most likely, a host of underlying neurobiological and psychological processes are at work that are opaque to conscious awareness.

More concretely, someone who has experienced something extremely traumatic may partly re-experience that trauma when exposed to some triggering event in their environment. It could be obvious or subtle, but in both cases the underlying mechanism is very likely associative in origin, with accompanying neurobiological processes at work.

For me it’s an extremely interesting question to ask how far a simple associative neurobiological process can go in explaining seemingly complex forms of cognition. One of my current hobbies is to ask how a brain that consists of neurons that simply excite or inhibit one another can produce an ordered representation of number. Our brains do encode quantity, but it is not at all clear how. That question relates to another issue I am deeply interested in—the representation of time. It’s clear to me that language is not necessary for either of these types of cognition.

During your tenure as editor of the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Learning and Cognition, what shifts or emerging trends in the field stood out to you most?

My field developed out of an interest in studying the evolution of mind—how various cognitive faculties may have emerged in different species throughout the animal kingdom. Progress has been complicated by our increasing appreciation of how difficult it is to measure underlying psychological and neurobiological mechanisms in a single species, let alone in many different ones. The field has developed increasingly sophisticated behavioral and neurobiological tools to uncover those mechanisms, and that gives me hope that significant progress will continue.

Beyond that, there is certainly more application of computational modeling to assist us in understanding how complex interacting systems like the brain explain behavioral and psychological phenomena. When the AI movement began in my field in the 1980s, I saw promise in early connectionist network approaches. After a period of enthusiasm, interest waned. But more recent successes in AI have shown scientists the power of so-called deep learning systems in explaining aspects of thought.

Some researchers are now using AI systems as new types of “participants” in experiments to see if those systems learn tasks in ways similar to humans and other animals. This research is in its infancy, but researchers are discovering that various forms of AI learn quite differently than humans. That means there needs to be more interaction among psychologists, neuroscientists, and computer scientists in devising biologically plausible systems. Currently, AI is largely produced through engineering approaches aimed at accomplishing functional tasks. Its true power may be realized when we can use these tools as reasonable models of how the mind and brain actually work. Then, many interesting and relevant applications may become possible.

For students at ������Ƶ who are interested in research careers, what questions about learning and cognition do you think are most exciting and relevant today?

I’ve always thought the field has been dominated by three basic questions: (1) What are the conditions necessary and sufficient for learning to take place? (2) What is the underlying content of that learning? and (3) How does that learning become translated into observable performance?

The first question is intensively studied in neuroscience. It attempts to identify the rules by which new connections between neurons get established—that is, what governs neuroplasticity in the brain.

The second question attempts to understand what aspects of the world become encoded in the brain as we learn. For example, sometimes behavior is automatic and habitual, and sometimes it is deliberate and goal-directed. These forms of behavioral control reflect distinct representational systems, and important questions concern how those systems interact to influence response choices. Moreover, other research increasingly points to how nonhuman animals acquire abstract representations of time, number, categorical information, and even other organisms and oneself. I expect these studies to continue to yield interesting discoveries.

Finally, the third question concerns how we use information encoded by the brain. This is closely related to decision-making—uncovering the rules we use in choice situations. Sometimes we “know” something is true but decide not to act on that knowledge. There are many interesting questions that arise from problems like that.

Overall, my advice to a student interested in research would be to learn enough about a discipline to identify a basic question that excites them, and then learn about the tools available to study that question. As students become more familiar with how the scientific process works, whether they answer their question definitively or not, this can lead to real insights, enthusiasm, and possibly a research career.

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Then came the ask: Will you give the opening remarks at an upcoming rally that Sen. Bernie Sanders was hosting on campus?

“My heart left my body,” he recalled. “I didn’t say yes immediately; I called my mom. She said, ‘Do it. You worked your whole life for opportunities like this.’”

Still, Lucero-Tacuri had never dreamed of a moment like this.

He was born and raised in Brooklyn on the edge of Borough Park. His parents sold Ecuadorian food out of a truck, and because they couldn’t afford child care, Lucero-Tacuri and his older sister spent afternoons and nights with them doing homework in the food cart, translating, and taking small orders.

The experience taught him about hard work and kept him connected to a culture he didn’t see reflected at his school. It also sometimes led to friction with his teachers, many of whom never fathomed that the sleepy kid in class was up late because his parents didn’t have other options.

“To constantly get yelled at for being tired just made me feel embarrassed and ashamed,” he said. “Nobody thought to ask what was going on at home. Looking back, I think that’s a big part of what pushed me to work in education. I want to be the person who gets to know the whole child.”

The Counselor He Never Had

Lucero-Tacuri ended up following his older sister, now a teacher, to ������Ƶ and studied childhood education as an undergraduate. But during student teaching, something didn’t fit. He watched a student—one of the only Black students in the classroom—constantly get scolded for missing homework. It took him back to his own childhood.

“I realized I cared most about the social-emotional piece,” he said. “The why, the barriers at home, the resources students need.”

He added psychology as a second major and pivoted to school counseling for his graduate studies. He’s currently interning at both an elementary and a high school—he was awarded a Marge Magner internship stipend for the experience—and frequently uses his Spanish to connect with students and families.

“I want to be the counselor I didn’t have—the adult who asks, ‘Are you okay? What do you need?’” he said. “Students aren’t checklists. They’re whole people with families and stories, and sometimes they’re carrying more than we can see. I want to meet them there.”

Work Ethic, Family First, Resilience

��His college years have been full of new and exciting experiences: Presenting at a conference in Poland with three of his school counseling peers; working as a social media assistant at CUNY TV; participating in the NYC Men Teach program; being elected to lead the GSO, a perch that made him—the child of immigrants with an American dream story to tell—a great choice to introduce the political giant.

He wove his story into his remarks. On the ride to campus, he and his sister reflected on how far they were from those food truck days.

“I kept reminding myself: you’re not terrified; you’re excited. When I finally spoke, it felt like a blur,” he said. “I never imagined that one day I’d be introducing a sitting U.S. Senator in front of a huge crowd. It was a dream I didn’t know I had.”

His parents had always told him and his siblings that if they wanted a better life, education was key. “They would tell me, ‘study hard so you don’t end up like us,’” he said. “I thought about that a lot recently. The thing is, I want to be just like them: Strong work ethic, family first, resilient.”

It’s a realization that taught him that success isn’t just about titles and academic or career accomplishments. It’s about values. That’s a lesson he hopes to impart to the students he works with.

“Education is about…preparing the next generation to lead with knowledge, integrity, and compassion,” he said from the stage that night. “Education doesn’t just open doors, it transforms lives, families, and futures.”

The post Beyond His Wildest Dreams appeared first on ������Ƶ.

For Braine, teaching about consent is a vital issue within sexual education at all levels.

“It is often a neglected area of the curriculum in part because it is actually quite complex and teachers don’t have the tools to help students understand,” said Braine. “Jaela’s research enabled her to address consent at different age-appropriate levels and incorporate teaching strategies into her curriculum materials.”

Williams was interested in the way consent changes when commerce is involved, and if sex workers are truly able to give an “enthusiastic yes,” beyond the accepted model of “enthusiastic consent,” a modern and empowering approach to understanding sexual consent.��Unlike older models that focused only on the absence of a “no,” this model emphasizes a clear, active, and positive expression of agreement.

“I wanted to meet with PROUD, a Dutch sex worker union, to interview someone about their experience in a country where sex work is legalized and regulated,” she says. “I would then use my findings to center sex workers’ experiences specifically in consent lessons in the curriculum.”

Unable to speak with the union, Williams interviewed a sex worker and returned home with new insights and a plan to continue her research and earn her master’s in sociology at the University of Amsterdam. But along with her application, Williams needed to fund her time abroad due to student visa restrictions. So she applied for a Fulbright scholarship—overseen by the U.S. Department of State—to study abroad. Although she was accepted to the university in January, Williams only recently learned that she had been awarded the scholarship, which will provide her with a monthly stipend while she is abroad.

Williams notes that the kind of research she is doing requires an understanding that regardless of the protections and the regulations afforded sex workers in the Netherlands, the work is still stigmatized. “Nevertheless, those protections were super important to make my research ethical. I think sex work, in general, is just very complicated, and you have to be very careful when you’re doing research.”

With her yearlong sojourn beginning at the end of August, Williams insists that access to interdisciplinary studies at ������Ƶ has been key.

“I was able to minor in women’s and gender studies and sociology and realized that sociology was what I was looking for the whole time,” says Williams. “I’m interested in identity studies and education. Sociology is the place where these interests meet and a field in which I feel I can make an impact.”

The post Addressing Consent appeared first on ������Ƶ.

Can you tell us a bit about your background?

I’m a Brooklyn native. When I was two years old, we moved to the Glenwood Projects in the Flatlands section of Brooklyn. I grew up there. It was predominantly working-class.

Back then, it was surrounded by prairies, freshwater swamps, and farms, although you wouldn’t know it if you visited the area today. I spent a lot of time with my friend Joel Friedman [’69] hunting for frogs and snakes, bringing them home, and keeping them as pets. Because of my experience capturing animals, I got interested in science. Joel and I got microscopes, and we would go into the swamp, collect water, and look at what was swimming around in it. While in middle school I started to excel in mathematics. As high school approached, I wanted to play football. But my father refused to sign the necessary paperwork, so I ended up joining the Tilden High School track team instead.

Speaking of ������Ƶ, why did you decide to enroll?

I wanted to win a track scholarship to a Division I college. But I injured my back during my senior year of high school. I had good enough grades to get into ������Ƶ. Although I was disappointed that I didn’t get to go to a “glamorous” Division I school on an athletic scholarship, going to ������Ƶ turned out to be a blessing. I got a great education at ������Ƶ. My wife attended an Ivy League school. I think my education was as good as hers. And ������Ƶ was free. I even ran track; I was a pretty good 400-meter runner.

Can you share with us any lasting memories of ������Ƶ?

I was involved in the anti-war and civil rights movements. The upshot was that the U.S. Senate’s Subcommittee on Internal Security subpoenaed my college records. I also wrote for the college underground newspaper, Nova Vanguard. I tried to interview Robert Kennedy when he came to ������Ƶ to give a talk. This was a few months before he was assassinated in June of 1968. I donated to the ������Ƶ Library archives a letter I received from him about setting up an interview.
There was a scholar named George Kennan, a professor at Princeton, who had been a key figure in the State Department. He played a pivotal role during the onset of the Cold War. He wrote a piece for The New York Times Magazine about student protests. That was in 1967. I wrote a letter to the editor of the magazine in response, which the editor rejected. But with so many letters pouring in, Kennan decided to publish a book that included his thoughts and some of the best letters that students had written. My letter was chosen. In 1968, while I was still an undergraduate at ������Ƶ, the book was published. It is called Democracy and the Student Left. It was my first mainstream publication.

It was a great time to be in college. We wanted to change the world, but the world changed us in many ways.

Tell us about your career path.

I was a math teacher for six years. While I taught, I attended graduate school at night at the New School for Social Research, where I earned a master’s degree in psychology. And then I left teaching. I had saved up a little money, and I got into the CUNY Graduate Center where I studied developmental psychology.

A job opened up at the New York State Psychiatric Institute, which is the Department of Psychiatry for Columbia University. With David Shaffer, a luminary in child and adolescent psychiatry, I worked on research linking a neurological abnormality to mood and anxiety disorders. Then I won a post-doctoral fellowship in epidemiology at Columbia’s School of Public Health, where I got to know Bruce Dohrenwend, a leader in the field of psychiatric epidemiology. Soon I was starting a family and happy to get a job at City College.

How did you get into the field of workplace burnout and depression?

I received several grants from CUNY and from the Centers for Disease Control to conduct research on factors that increase the risk of depression in teachers. While I was in the midst of that research, I started to read about burnout—this was in the early 1990s. Although I mostly published on the impact of teachers’ working conditions on depression, I published one, largely unread, paper on burnout–depression overlap. This was around 1992. Twenty years later, I received an email from the editor of the Journal of Health Psychology asking me to review a paper on depression and burnout. The researcher (reviews are masked) obtained a large sample of French schoolteachers and gave them and a sample of depressed outpatients a depression symptom scale and a burnout scale to complete. The depressive symptom profiles of the teachers with very high burnout scores and the depressed patients were similar. Depression scores of both groups differed sharply from the depression scores of teachers with lower burnout scores.

I recommended that the journal publish the study and forgot about it. Three months later I received an email from a French doctoral student, Renzo Bianchi, asking me if I would be willing to collaborate with him. When I learned that he was the author of the paper I reviewed, we started to collaborate. This was back in 2013. We have been collaborating ever since. He coauthored our new book.

Prior to the 1970s, workplace burnout was not formally addressed. You went to your job, gritted your teeth, and retired with a gold watch at the end.

There is a doctor at Harvard, Lisa S. Rotenstein, who conducted a review of 180 studies of burnout in physicians. And what she found was that there were 140 different definitions of burnout. So there is no consensus diagnosis. Although psychological exhaustion is the core component of burnout, there are, according to Christina Maslach, a leading burnout researcher, two other components of burnout— depersonalization and reduced accomplishment. Depersonalization involves distancing yourself from other people with whom you interact on the job. An example would be teachers maintaining their distance from students and doctors maintaining their distance from patients. Reduced personal accomplishment occurs when you are on the job and feel like you haven’t accomplished very much.

Renzo and I have found that correlations between the core exhaustion of burnout and depression are higher than the correlations among exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced accomplishment components. We are convinced that burnout scales measure several but not all depressive symptoms. Several colleagues and I are presenting on a 160-sample meta-analysis on burnout–depression overlap at the Work, Stress, and Health Conference in Seattle in July.

And can burnout behaviors and feelings lead to or be symptoms of depression?��

Burnout behaviors and feelings are not unrelated to depressive symptoms because people who are very depressed tend to denigrate their accomplishments. And often, people who are depressed tend to be a little standoffish and don’t want to interact with other people. Please remember that we regard depression as a continuum like temperature, and that people can have varying levels of depressive symptoms without being clinically depressed. Those experiencing very high levels of those symptoms are likely to be clinically depressed. In our research, Renzo and I have examined the burnout–depression relationship whether we treat both entities as reflecting continua or both reflecting diagnoses. Because there is little evidence to show that burnout is different from depression, it is impossible to claim that one causes the other.

So, by calling something workplace burnout we may be missing the depression that underlies it? What does the evidence suggest about treatments?

The last chapter of the book looks at treatments for depression and delves into two principal kinds of psychotherapy that have been demonstrated to be effective in helping people with depression: interpersonal therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy. There’s excellent evidence that they are effective. And they don’t take years. The book also addresses research on workplace interventions that can prevent work-related depressive symptoms from developing. We, however, note there is a need for more research on workplace interventions.

Are you retired, yet?

Yes. I am a professor emeritus. I retired after I got COVID-19 in March 2020. I had three grandkids at the time. I thought that I would probably have a fourth one day, and I did. I wanted to be alive to watch them grow up a little. Nevertheless, I have felt ambivalent about retiring. I love research and writing. I’m teaching myself R programming, the software that almost everyone in data science uses. I am going to use it in a statistics class I am going to teach at the CUNY Graduate Center in the fall.

So, no burnout for you?

No, I love what I do!

The post Behind Burnout appeared first on ������Ƶ.

Assistant Professor of Philosophy Matthew Lindauer was awarded the Feliks Gross Award, which is given for outstanding research by CUNY assistant professors.

Lindauer’s main areas of research are moral and political philosophy, moral psychology, and experimental philosophy. He was previously a postdoctoral fellow at The Australian National University and received his Ph.D. from Yale in 2015.

Matthew Lindauer

He has published several journal articles and books, including “Righting Domestic Wrongs with Refugee Policy,” for Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, and Advances in Experimental Political Philosophy (Bloomsbury Publishing).

Henry Wasser Award

Assistant Professor of Psychology Ana Gantman was awarded the Henry Wasser Award, which is given for outstanding research by CUNY assistant professors.

Ana Gantman

After receiving her Ph.D. from New York University in 2016, Gantman completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Princeton University jointly in the Psychology Department and the School for Public Policy and International Affairs. Her research program investigates moral psychology as it pertains to social issues and public policy and affects behavior, cognition, and perception.

Gantman’s most recent journal articles include “Preventing Sexual Violence: A Behavioral Problem Without a Behaviorally Informed Solution” (Psychological Science in the Public Interest) and “Is feminized labor antithetical to profitable labor?” (Psychology of Women Quarterly).

Jerome Krase/Sandi Cooper Awards

Associate professors Yoon-Joo Lee and Dena Shottenkirk have been selected as recipients of the inaugural Jerome Krase/Sandi Cooper Awards for Outstanding Research for Associate Professors in CUNY for 2025.

Named in honor of distinguished CUNY scholars and longtime CUNY Academy board members Jerome Krase and Sandi Cooper, the awards recognize exceptional research contributions by associate professors across the university system.

Yoon-Joo Lee

Lee, of the Department of Childhood, Bilingual, and Special Education, is a leader in inclusive education and disability studies. She mentors master’s students in the graduate program in Early Childhood Special Education and is widely respected for her commitment to amplifying marginalized voices. Her recent book, Stories on Disability Through Our Voices: Born This Way, explores the lived experiences of Korean and Korean American women with visible disabilities. The book was recently featured at a special event hosted by ������Ƶ’s Ethyle R. Wolfe Institute for the Humanities.

Dena Shottenkirk

Shottenkirk, Department of Philosophy, specializes in aesthetics and epistemology. She is also a practicing artist and founder of talkPOPc, a public philosophy and art nonprofit. Her work bridges theory and practice, including her book Cover Up the Dirty Parts!—a critique of 1980s censorship and a philosophical examination of the role of art in society. Her academic contributions also include the co-edited volume Perception, Cognition and Aesthetics and the monograph Nominalism and Its Aftermath: The Philosophy of Nelson Goodman (Springer). Her monograph, ​Art as Cognition:��How Gist Reframes the Aesthetic Experience��as Conversation, is forthcoming in 2025 (Springer). She is currently on a fellowship at the Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany at the .��

Awardees will present their research in a panel during the 2025 academic year, where the awards will be formally conferred. Each honoree will also receive a stipend.

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Bringing a child into the world is often seen as one of the most joyous moments in a mother’s life. But for many, moments of bliss are overshadowed by the silent, yet powerful, presence of perinatal mental health (PMH) disorders.

These conditions span a vast and often devastating spectrum of mood, anxiety, and related disorders that can take hold during pregnancy or within the first year postpartum—ranging from depression and anxiety to obsessive-compulsive disorder, substance use disorder, and postpartum psychosis.

Their impact is not confined to mothers; they ripple outward, deeply affecting fathers, families, and the fragile foundation of early parenthood. What should be a time of love, bonding, and new beginnings can instead become a relentless battle against crushing stress, isolation, and despair.

At their most severe, these disorders do more than steal joy—they take lives.

According to a recent report by the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, the leading cause of pregnancy-associated deaths was attributed to mental health conditions. And when you add that Black women in New York City were on average nine times more likely to die from pregnancy-related complications than their White counterparts, the ability to identify and intervene is nothing short of a matter of life and death in communities of color.

While there has been a growing awareness of the need to address PMH, the system to screen, diagnose, and treat remains fragmented and inconsistent. This is especially true in Brooklyn and other underserved communities, where educational and other resources are scarce.

A Powerful PMH Partnership

Antonio Reynoso and Michelle J. Anderson

To help make meaningful and lasting change in the neighborhoods it serves, ������Ƶ connected with Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso and the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene to develop the first credit-bearing advanced certificate program in perinatal mental health in New York State. The program will educate and train mental health, health care, and early education/early intervention professionals to work with pregnant mothers and birthing parents.

In collaboration with Borough President Reynoso’s Maternal Health Task Force and experts from the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, a multidisciplinary team from ������Ƶ developed innovative coursework on perinatal mental health to ensure a comprehensive and interdisciplinary approach to this important area of education.

“As one of the Borough’s longstanding anchor institutions, we are honored to partner with President Antonio Reynoso and his Maternal Health Task Force in this vital mission, and we deeply appreciate his steadfast support of the PMH program,” ������Ƶ President Michelle J. Anderson said. “We are thrilled to develop this innovative curriculum, which seamlessly combines academic excellence with tangible, real-world impact. This initiative is a testament to our unwavering commitment to providing compassionate, community-driven education and training that truly makes a difference.”

This spring, two pilot courses are underway, and the full certificate program will launch in the 2025–26 academic year.

The program’s coursework was specifically designed for licensed professionals or those pursuing careers in fields such as mental health counseling, social work, clinical and counseling psychology, midwifery, doula work, nursing, OB-GYN, and pediatrics, as well as in the area of early childhood/early intervention. The program presents a one-of-a-kind opportunity to transform academic learning into meaningful, real-world change.

Groundbreaking Curriculum

Haroula Ntalla, Jacqueline Shannon, and Michelle J. Anderson

This spring, Clinical Professor Haroula Ntalla led one of two groundbreaking pilot courses, Parent-Child Dyad Relational Health, a deep dive into the roots of mental well-being within the parent-child bond—beginning prenatally and extending through the child’s first year of life. The course explored how early relational experiences shape lifelong mental health, emphasizing the powerful connection between parents and infants.

The second pilot course, Biopsychosocial Aspects of the Perinatal Period, was co-taught by Nina Newman, and Ira Glovinsky ’68. This interdisciplinary course examined the intricate interplay of biological, psychological, and social factors that influence the perinatal experience—from pre-pregnancy through childbirth and beyond.

“Perinatal mental health is not just a Brooklyn issue—it’s a New York City crisis,” Ntalla said. “However, Brooklyn has been at the epicenter of alarming trends. Recent maternal mortality cases at Brooklyn hospitals underscore the urgent need for intervention, as mental health plays a significant role in these tragedies. Without proper intervention, these factors contribute to poor health outcomes for both mothers and their children, reinforcing cycles of trauma and instability within families.”

Professor Laura Rabin, who initiated the curriculum design with Rona Miles, said ������Ƶ’s PMH curriculum directly addresses a public health crisis in perinatal care.

“Our goal is to improve maternal and child outcomes throughout New York City, and this program will enhance professionals’ clinical skills and help address maternal perinatal mental health problems, including perinatal mood and anxiety disorders (PMADs) and substance use disorders,” Rabin said.

Ntalla and Associate Professor Jacqueline Shannon leveraged existing expertise from ������Ƶ’s early childhood education and early intervention training and curriculum. They realized that mental health was often at the center of many of the issues they were teaching. The need for this specific curriculum became obvious, allowing them to build on the PMH curriculum design initiated by Rabin and Miles.

Shannon, who directs the PMH program, added: “We are excited to offer this specialized curriculum that not only bridges academic learning with real-world impact but also reflects our commitment to a compassionate, community-centered approach to perinatal care with a clinical focus on supporting maternal mental health across professions.”

Leading the Change

Keema Wiley and Georgina Gooden

Georgina Gooden and Keema Wiley were seemingly destined for the frontlines of early intervention and perinatal mental health advocacy.

Gooden moved to Brooklyn from Jamaica in 2015 to be closer to family. She had her son in 2018, and while living in Brownsville, she began paying closer attention to the struggles that mothers, including herself, and their families faced. She started volunteering, first as a community member, and then as a dedicated advocate.

As an Early Intervention Ambassador Assistant with United for Brownsville, Gooden found a platform to address early childhood disparities, particularly in accessing early intervention services for Black and Brown children. Her firsthand experience with the PMH issues in the New York City health system led her to enroll in the pilot courses offered in ������Ƶ’s PMH program.

“I realized our voices, our lived experiences, could drive real change. The data supported what we already knew—our communities weren’t getting the same access to mental health resources,” Gooden said. “This is a crisis, and yet, until now, there were no structured graduate-level programs dedicated to tackling it. ������Ƶ changed that.”

Now, as she also pursues her master’s degree in early childhood education from ������Ƶ, Gooden is seeing the direct impact of her work. She follows expectant mothers through their pregnancies, gaining hands-on experience that connects research with reality.

“One of the most heartbreaking things is that many mothers are afraid to admit they’re struggling. They fear being judged because of the stigma, or worse, having their children taken away. The system isn’t built to support them—it’s built to punish them.”

A Different Kind of Front Line

Working as a trained doula, Wiley offers emotional, physical, and informational support to mothers and their families before, during, and after childbirth. She also works at United for Brownsville, serving as the Strategy and Improvement Manager and leading the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) Equity Initiative while enrolled in ������Ƶ’s PMH courses.

Wiley’s journey into maternal and infant health has been anything but conventional.

After graduating high school in 2009, she initially pursued college but was deterred by the financial burden. Instead, she enlisted in the New York Army National Guard in 2010. Over time, her interest in health care grew, leading her to explore midwifery. However, during the COVID-19 pandemic, she realized that becoming a nurse-midwife would place her on the front lines as both a soldier and a civilian—a challenge she wasn’t ready to undertake.

Instead, she discovered that the nursing prerequisites overlapped with public health, and she pivoted her focus.

Through her studies at Hunter College, she quickly honed in on maternal and child health. Her research was deeply personal—she had a smooth, uncomplicated birth experience in 2015, but many of her friends did not.

This stark contrast drove her to investigate how to improve birth outcomes for women who looked like her and shared her background. She recognized that too many mothers and babies in her community were suffering preventable complications, and she became determined to be part of the solution.

Wiley was introduced to the program at ������Ƶ through a professional connection at United for Brownsville. Recognizing the importance of mental well-being during and after pregnancy, she eagerly enrolled.

Through her doula practice and public health initiatives, Wiley is working to normalize conversations about mental well-being during pregnancy and postpartum.

“There’s this expectation that pregnancy and new motherhood should be the happiest time of your life,” she says. “But for so many women, that’s just not the case. And if they feel like they can’t talk about it, they suffer in silence.”

A Summit for Innovation and Impact

Dr. Ashanda Saint-Jean

To spark real change and elevate awareness around the PMH crisis, ������Ƶ—alongside Borough President Reynoso, the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, and United for Brownsville—hosted the college’s first Perinatal Mental Health Summit on April 4.

The groundbreaking event brought together over 200 attendees and a dozen leading voices in health and mental health, forming a powerful coalition to tackle one of the most urgent and overlooked issues in Brooklyn—and across the country.

The audience filled the space, united by a shared mission: to confront the perinatal mental health crisis head-on. The event, driven by the leadership of Shannon and Ntalla, didn’t just highlight the problem—it delivered real talk, real solutions, and real resources for families and care providers navigating these challenges every day.

The summit featured bold, thought-provoking discussions led by a lineup of interdisciplinary experts. At the heart of it was keynote speaker Dr. Ashanda Saint-Jean, M.D., a leader in the fight for maternal health equity. A board-certified OB/GYN, faculty member at New York Medical College, and a leader on both the New York City and New York State Maternal Mortality Review Boards, Dr. Saint-Jean brought her deep experience—and even deeper passion—to the stage.

Among those helping to bring the summit to life were Gooden and Wiley, who took on vital roles in organizing, marketing, and presenting.

“This isn’t just an academic exercise,” said Gooden. “This is about life and death. Mothers are dying. Families are being broken apart. For children, that’s their whole world. We need systemic change—and we need it now.”

������Ƶ’s PMH Program At a Glance
The full certificate program will launch in the 2025–26 academic year.

• Yearlong, online synchronous program that offers six interdisciplinary perinatal health and mental health courses.
• 120 in-person clinical hours in the PMH field, which include hours of individual and/or group work with diverse individuals, in addition to case presentations, reflective practice, and supervision by licensed professionals.
• Graduates will be competitive candidates for employment within the broad perinatal field and will be prepared to take Postpartum Support International’s perinatal mental health exam.
• The ������Ƶ curriculum team includes:
  • Associate Professor Rona Miles and Professor Laura Rabin
  • Assistant Professor Garumma Feyissa
  • Associate Professor Jacqueline Shannon
  • Clinical Professors Haroula Ntalla, Nina Newman, and Ira Glovinsky ’68, ’72 M.S.Ed.

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In college, when many young people are first learning how to make their way in the broader world, accessible mental health services can mean the difference between resilience and crisis, between healing and isolation. These services are not just about managing stress or overcoming obstacles—they are essential to students’ success.

At ������Ƶ, the Personal Counseling Program provides free and confidential services, offering a range of support, including individual and group counseling, crisis intervention, and workshops on stress and time management.

These services are not simply a convenience. Many students face very significant obstacles in accessing community services, including co-pays that are unaffordable for the student, insurance disclosures to families who oppose seeking help, and long waiting times for appointments. If they don’t have access to campus services, many become discouraged and drop out.

With demand for mental health services on the rise, the staff—four full-time licensed mental health professionals, along with several part-time staff comprised of master of social work and doctoral trainees—plays a vital role in supporting student well-being. The program provides more than 4,000 sessions annually to over 700 students, a number that has grown significantly in recent years.

Increasing Demand

“Before the pandemic, we were already seeing an increase in the severity of mental health issues among college students,” says Gregory Kuhlman, the director of the program and a professor in the M.A. program in mental health counseling. “Now, the impact is even greater.”

Kuhlman says that the demand for services has been “elastic,” meaning the more accessible and welcoming the services, the more students seek support.

In previous pandemics, studies showed that up to 7% of people experienced post-traumatic stress. The college’s diverse student population has felt this impact acutely. Many students come from communities heavily affected by the crisis, including health care and other frontline workers, and families who suffered significant losses.

The impact of social isolation is another post-pandemic concern.

“College is a time when students are supposed to build relationships, but the pandemic disrupted that,” says Andy Hale, one of the program’s licensed clinicians. “Now, many students struggle to connect and aren’t sure where to start.”

Kuhlman also notes a shift in the types of cases the program handles. Previously, only about a quarter of students seeking help exhibited significant risk factors such as suicidality or self-harm. Now, more than half present with serious concerns requiring close monitoring and intervention.

“[While] we don’t have the resources to provide long-term individual therapy to every student,” he says, “we screen everyone who comes in for risk and prioritize care accordingly. Our goal is to ensure that students get the help they need, whether through in-house counseling or referrals to external providers.”

The Power of the Peer

One of the program’s most effective tools is group therapy, which the staff say is incredibly powerful but underutilized.

“People assume individual therapy is better, but research shows that group therapy can sometimes be more effective,” says Hale, pointing out that group sessions provide peer support and community.

“There is often someone in the group who is a step ahead in their healing journey. Watching peers navigate similar challenges can be incredibly powerful,” he adds.

Prarthana Patelia, a second-year student in the mental health counseling M.A. program, says that the college years are an ideal time to engage in these services. “Most students are juggling so many things—personal issues, career aspirations, choosing a major. These things can induce so much anxiety. When you have this type of service on campus, you don’t even have to go out of your way. It can be life-changing to have someone in the field who can listen to you and give you the right guidance.”

The program provides various group therapy options, including interpersonal process groups, cognitive behavioral therapy groups, coping skills workshops, and mindfulness-based sessions. Some groups have formed organically around shared experiences, such as grief support or navigating masculinity.

As mental health challenges continue to evolve, the staff will remain committed to adapting its services, Hale says.

“Students are figuring out who they are, what they want, and how to navigate life’s challenges. If we can support them in that journey, it benefits not just the individual but the broader community as well.”

Broad Impact

To ensure that students know about available services, the program collaborates with various campus organizations, including the LGBTQ+ Resource Center, the Immigrant Student Success Office, and the Women’s Center. While they offer general workshops on things like time management and stress management, they sometimes create tailored supports for special populations.

“This might look like designing a specialized workshop, visiting a resource space in the wake of a painful or traumatic event for that community, or support at a campus event that the organizer anticipates may be emotionally charged,” explains Hale.

Beyond individual well-being, mental health professionals at the college agree that mental health services are integral to student retention and success.

“Academic success is often accompanied by good attention, organizational, and study skills, and these skills can be impacted when facing mental health concerns,” says Professor Paul McCabe, chair of the Department of School Psychology, Counseling, and Leadership.

“Students who are struggling with mental health issues, stress, and trauma may not be able to fully attend to their studies and cope with life demands. Counseling can help students develop coping strategies and self-care so they are better able to focus on their studies, thus leading to increased academic success.”

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Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso and ������Ƶ President Michelle J. Anderson at Borough Hall on April 3.

To raise public awareness and drive meaningful change, ������Ƶ, in partnership with Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso, the New York City Health Department, and United for Brownsville, hosted the Inaugural Perinatal Mental Health Summit on April 4. This landmark event featured more than a dozen interdisciplinary health and mental health experts and served as a crucial platform to address one of the most urgent health care challenges facing Brooklyn and the nation today.

The daylong event—spearheaded by ������Ƶ and led by Associate Professor of Early Childhood Education/Art Education Jacqueline Shannon and Clinical Professor Haroula Ntalla—was attended by more than 200 people and highlighted the growing crisis, discussed tangible solutions, and offered resources to support families and health care providers alike.

“The inaugural summit on perinatal mental health exemplifies the strength of partnerships united by a common cause,” said ������Ƶ President Michelle J. Anderson, who also participated in the event. “Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso is a leader in tackling maternal health disparities and a vital ally in our mission to serve the community and improve health outcomes.”

������Ƶ Associate Professor of Early Childhood Education/Art Education Jacqueline Shannon.

“We were proud to host this important event and provide a platform for experts from Brooklyn’s diverse communities to share the latest research, best practices, and real-world experiences in perinatal mental health,” Shannon said. “It also served as a bridge, fostering crucial dialogue between academia and frontline community-based professionals to drive meaningful change through innovation and collaboration.”

As one of the speakers, Ntalla emphasized the deeply troubling and tragic reality that each year, 700 women in the United States lose their lives due to complications related to pregnancy and childbirth. As alarmingly, around one in seven women experience postpartum depression—a condition that can have devastating consequences, not only for the mother’s health but also for her entire family, leaving enduring emotional and psychological scars that too often become intergenerational.

President Michelle J. Anderson and Summit keynote speaker Dr. Ashanda Saint-Jean

The event was ignited by thought-provoking discussions, spearheaded by a distinguished panel of experts. Among them was keynote speaker, Dr. Ashanda Saint-Jean, M.D., a board-certified OB/GYN, and Fellow of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

Also a faculty member at New York Medical College’s Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, co-chair of the New York City Maternal Mortality Review Board, and appointed member of the New York State Maternal Mortality Review Board, Dr. Saint-Jean is known for her ground-breaking work as an advocate for equitable health care for underrepresented minority women that champions a holistic, patient-centered approach. During her lecture, she highlighted that perinatal mental health issues are now the leading cause of maternal deaths. She also emphasized the severe lack of support systems, particularly for women of color in Brooklyn, urging immediate action and a reevaluation of current approaches.

(Left to right) Two students who are enrolled in ������Ƶ’s pilot Perinatal Mental Health program courses, Keema Wiley and Georgina Gooden, participated in the Summit.

A day earlier on April 3 at Brooklyn Borough Hall, President Anderson joined Reynoso to unveil New York State’s first —an initiative overseen by Shannon and Ntalla —to address the growing need for specialized training in perinatal mental health.

In collaboration with Reynoso’s Maternal Health Task Force and experts from the New York City Department of Health, a multidisciplinary team from ������Ƶ developed innovative coursework on perinatal mental health to ensure a comprehensive and interdisciplinary approach to this important area of education.

The ������Ƶ team included:

• Associate Professor Rona Miles and Professor Laura Rabin, Psychology
• Assistant Professor Garumma Feyissa, Health and Nutrition Sciences
• Associate Professor Shannon and clinical professors Haroula Ntalla, Nina Newman, and Ira Glovinsky (’68, ’72 M.S.Ed.) Early Childhood Education/Art Education.��

This spring, two pilot courses are underway, with the first full cohort set to launch in fall 2025.

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Born and raised in Marine Park, Brooklyn, the brothers were first-generation students. Their father immigrated from Sicily and, given their roots, they were drawn to the campus culture that welcomes all students.

“I saw the diversity of the student body, people from literally all over the world. I thought that was amazing,” says Michael, who earned a B.S. in business management and finance (now the business administration��B.B.A.) and an M.S. in business administration. “This melting pot of cultures and ideas is what makes the work meaningful and fulfilling.”

From Boylan Hall to the West End Building to the West Quad Center, each brother fills a crucial role at the college.

Andrew, who received a B.A. in history, is the administrative events manager in the Office of Auxiliary Services. From organizing conferences to coordinating movie shoots and student and staff events, Andrew’s day-to-day is always different.

“My job really forced me to become more of a people person,” he says.

Joseph, who earned a B.S. in psychology, started as a tutor in the Learning Center as an undergraduate. Today, he supports students one-on-one as manager of the .

“I work on the frontlines with students from their first day on campus to graduation. I get to hear their stories,” he says. “I love helping students with any issues they’re experiencing.”

Michael, the math whiz, is the Director of the Office of Budget and Finance.

“Even though I’m in front of a computer screen all day, I enjoy helping staff and faculty with managing their budgets. It’s a lot of problem-solving because our office is the go-to for general questions,” he says.

Though they work in separate offices, they do occasionally find themselves in the same meetings. Regardless if they run into each other on campus, they catch up with regular lunches at the Junction.

People often confuse them—particularly Michael and Joseph, who are twins.

“It’s funny,” says Joseph. “There was one time when I was working in the registrar and Michael was working in the bursar. A student went from my office to his and they thought that I had run to a different office.”

Off-campus, the brothers prioritize family. The Lanzas are tight-knit. Some of their other family members are alumni and former staff members themselves who encouraged them to apply for roles at the college after graduation.

The three live within walking distance of one another and commute together to weekly Sunday pasta dinners with family in New Jersey. They also go to heavy metal concerts as a tribute to their father, who passed away when they were young.

“Our dad always played heavy metal music in the car, so it stuck with us,” says Andrew, a guitarist, bassist, and singer.

Although Joseph and Michael also love music, they’re known for being the sports fanatics of the family.

“From September to January, Joseph and I are going on about football. Andrew’s more musically inclined, so he leaves the room when we’re talking about it,” Michael jokes.

After 10 years, the brothers consider the ������Ƶ community family.

“������Ƶ feels like our second home,” says Michael.

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