My program of research:
My goal as a clinical scientist is to build an interdisciplinary program of research focused on identifying mechanisms that increase risk for youth suicidal and self-injurious thoughts and behaviors (SITBs), with particular attention to developmentally relevant risk factors that can be leveraged to enhance interventions. In my research, I use multi-method approaches to more comprehensively capture processes increasing risk for SITBs during adolescence, such as sleep and emotion regulation.
A primary objective of my graduate studies is to extend lab-based knowledge of risk processes implicated in youth SITBs to real-time monitoring of experiences in daily life. To achieve this, my program of research has focused on investigating proximal, time-varying, and potentially modifiable risk factors for suicide and self-injury in youth, using ecologically valid assessment approaches (i.e., ecological momentary assessment, wrist actigraphy).
My experience in this area includes examining promising developmentally relevant risk factors such as sleep problems (e.g., insomnia, nightmares), emotion regulation difficulties (i.e., difficulty managing frequent and intense emotional states), and reward processing (i.e., ability to detect and learn from positive/pleasurable experiences). Thus far, my work has revealed that presence of nightmares, a specific sleep problem, may strengthen the association between heightened negative affect and self-injurious thoughts in high-risk youth (Patel et al., 2025). I have also investigated how facets of anhedonia (i.e., disruptions in reward processing) mediate the link between sleep indices of insomnia and suicidal thoughts in high-risk youth (Patel et al., 2025). In addition, I have explored associations between distinct arousal dimensions of negative affect and self-injurious thoughts in high-risk youth (Patel et al., under review).
To further extend this programmatic line of research, a major component of my dissertation will be to leverage temporally sensitive and multi-method approaches to rigorously assess sleep parameters within a real-time monitoring framework and assess how dynamic short-term risk processes for suicidal thoughts unfold. I will clarify pre-sleep (i.e., constructs such as pre-sleep arousal that may disrupt sleep) and post-sleep (i.e., emotion regulation capabilities that may be impacted by sleep problems) mechanisms that may increase risk for suicide in high-risk adolescents. Notably, I was awarded the 2025 American Psychological Foundation Koppitz Child Psychology Graduate Student Fellowship and the 2025 APA Division 53 Routh Dissertation Grant to conduct this research.
Ultimately, my program of research aims not only to identify when high-risk youth may be at risk for suicide or self-injury, but also how youth may be at risk, which is critical for targeting interventions to reduce deleterious outcomes.
Select publications:
Patel, K. K., Mournet, A. M., Luce, A. J., Auad, E. C., Liu, R. T., Kleiman, E. M., & Glenn, C. R. (2025). Nightmares and self-injurious thoughts among clinically acute adolescents: Examining negative affect as a potential mechanism. Journal of Affective Disorders, 381, 532-540.
Patel, K. K., Kearns, J. C., Foti, D., Pigeon, W. R., Kleiman, E. M., & Glenn, C. R. (2025). Anhedonia links sleep problems and suicidal thoughts: An intensive longitudinal study in high-risk adolescents. Research on Child and Adolescent Psychopathology, 53, 331–347.
To view a full copy of my CV, please click here.
Select peer-reviewed conference presentations:
Suicide Research Symposium Paper Presentation – 2025
SRS_Presentation_PATELFuture Directions Forum Poster Presentation – 2024
Patel_FDF_Poster_6.18.24ABCT Poster Presentation – 2024
ABCT_Poster_Patel_SUBMITAPS Poster Presentation – 2023
Patel_APS_Poster_5.8.23_Resized