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Catching Up with Kelsie Forbush, Ph.D., past Trailblazer Pilot Awardee

Jan 09, 2024

Currently: Professor, Department of Psychology; University of Kansas (Lawrence campus)

Eating disorders are some of the biggest mental health challenges among adolescents and anorexia nervosa is the second deadliest mental health disease. And how a person responds in the first four weeks of treatment is currently the only robust predictor of how a patient will respond to treatment. However, waiting to see how a client will respond to treatment is risky because it may exhaust already limited financial and insurance resources. It is also unknown why some individuals respond rapidly to treatment and why anorexia nervosa persists for others.

For Kelsie Forbush, her study focused on the need to identify neuromarkers that might relay early risk for poor treatment outcomes to help inform decisions about the type and intensity of treatment that may be needed.   

“This grant helped us gather data that we can use to apply for a larger grant to replicate our study on a larger scale,” Forbush said. “Our goal is to test certain neurocognitive marks that we think may predict short-term response to treatment. If we find that performance on neurocognitive tests predict short-term outcomes, then eventually therapists might be able to use these tests to inform their treatment planning.

“If we can figure out who might respond (or not) to treatment, it may help to increase the likelihood of successful long-term outcomes and prevent an eating disorder from becoming chronic,” she said.

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Kelly Hale

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