Emily Bibby

Spotlight on a Researcher

Emily Bibby is a doctoral student in the Relationship Development Center at Stony Brook University. She was the 2024 recipient of the ABCT Research Facilitation Committee’s Graduate Student Research Grant, which was awarded to support her project entitled:  “A Video-Based Single-Session Intervention for Emerging Adults Coping with a Breakup.”

Tell us about the project the GSRG is funding.

The project aims to create, and pilot test a web-based video Single Session Intervention (SSI) including cognitive-behavioral, mindfulness, and acceptance-based approaches, adapted from the Romantic Competence Relationship Education program, to teach emerging adults how to effectively cope with a breakup. To test the efficacy of the breakup SSI, we will conduct a randomized control trial comparing the breakup SSI to popular YouTube videos that focus on dealing with a breakup (i.e., active control group). Thus, our study will not only be to develop and test the efficacy of the SSI on a series of relevant questionnaire outcomes, but also we will test its effectiveness compared to the information and advice currently accessible and commonly viewed online.

What does getting this award mean to you?

I am so grateful for receiving the Graduate Student Research Award. Receiving this award affirms the importance of studying romantic relationships and the impact relationships and breakups can have on individual mental health. I am very passionate about helping people cope with breakups since it is a ubiquitous experience for young adults and can be incredibly distressing, leading many to seek out help. Receiving this award highlights the value of my proposed project to help improve the gap between need and access to mental health services for people going through a breakup.

This award will also allow me to expand my research experiences and help prepare me for my research future through developing an SSI and conducting my first randomized control trial. Once completing this project, I will have the experience to continue to develop new SSIs that are needed in the romantic relationship field.

How has ABCT contributed to your development as a researcher and clinician?

ABCT has allowed me to stay up to date on the current romantic relationship research in my field and meet other graduate students with similar research interests. Additionally, I have been able to meet many of the professors whose papers first inspired me to research romantic relationships and whose work have been foundational to my own research endeavors. Attending ABCT conferences each year, especially since starting the clinical work in my program, has allowed me to learn the current applications, findings, and cultural considerations for many of the interventions I have been trained in and use with my clients. ABCT embodies the important connection between research and practice. After each conference and talk I attend, I always come away with new intervention techniques and considerations I can implement in my clinical work. 

How did you first become involved in research? What was this first research experience like?

I became involved in research as an undergraduate at Binghamton University after taking Dr. Steven Lynn’s Psychotherapy course where we learned how research has played an integral role in developing and improving interventions. During my sophomore year, I was accepted to Dr. Lynn’s lab as well as Drs. Richard Mattson and Matthew Johnson’s joint lab focusing on romantic relationships. My first project with Dr. Mattson entailed learning how to code positive and negative affect during couples’ interactions using the Specific Affect Coding System (SPAFF). Watching couples discuss their relationship conflicts helped me understand the importance of open communication. This project first sparked my interest in conducting research on romantic relationships and helping dyads improve their relationships through research and in clinical settings. With Dr. Mattson’s dedicated mentorship, I accumulated a wide range of research skills working on numerous projects in the lab and ultimately developed and ran my own study for my honors thesis looking at the misperception of sexual interest.

What does an average day or week look like for you? 

Every day and week of my Clinical PhD program is a different adventure. I have many different roles that I cycle through during the day: researcher, clinician, student, colleague, teacher, undergraduate mentor, etc. Within my research I may have a day where I am running analyses for one project, and then the next day I am writing a pre-registration for a new project or drafting a manuscript. With all the different roles and commitments, I find it is really important for me to use my google calendar to keep track of all the different meetings, classes, and sessions I have throughout the week and write out all the tasks broken down that I need and would like to accomplish each week. At the start of each day, I pick three main tasks I would like to complete and block off hours in my calendar to ensure I have enough time to finish them.

What drew you to this particular research question?

Relationship breakups are the most common trigger of a first episode of major depressive disorder and one of the largest risk factors for medically serious suicide attempts in young adults. Unfortunately, breakups are a very universal experience, especially among young adults, and it is therefore not surprising how many people seek out therapy after experiencing a breakup. However, there are significant barriers to helping people learn to cope with breakups in a healthy way and a large gap between need and access to mental health services. After scouring the internet and literature, I realized there were not a lot of accessible research informed resources out there to help people learn to cope with a breakup. I hope that with access to evidence-based tools on how to effectively handle a breakup, people can learn healthy coping skills which they can carry forward when they may experience breakups or other interpersonal distress in the future.

If you weren’t pursuing a career in psychology, what would you be doing?

If I wasn’t pursuing a career in psychology, I would likely be an opera singer! I attended LaGuardia High School (the FAME school) as a vocal major which first sparked my love of classical music. My passion for music continued in undergrad where I graduated from Binghamton University with two bachelor’s degrees in 4-years: a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and a Bachelor of Music in Vocal Performance. Even though I decided not to pursue music as a career, my experiences singing and performing over the years have helped me become a better research communicator and presenter whether that be giving talks at conferences or teaching lectures in the classroom.