Distinguished Professor of Psychology
313-577-2247
mlumley@wayne.edu
About me.
~ I plan to recruit one new graduate student in my lab starting in Fall 2024. ~
My primary interests focus on emotions, stress, and physical health. I am particularly interested in individual differences in emotional abilities and deficits, such as the personality construct of alexithymia, and how emotional awareness and expression influence stress and coping and affect health status. Much of my recent research develops and tests the effects of emotion-focused interventions, including written emotional disclosure and Emotional Awareness and Expression Therapy (EAET) which I developed with my colleague, Howard Schubiner, MD. I also have contributed to the development and testing of Pain Reprocessing Therapy (PRT), which is closely related to EAET. My students, colleagues, and I have conducted many small- and large-scale clinical trials of these interventions on people with a range of health problems, but most commonly, chronic pain conditions such as fibromyalgia, head pain, urogenital pain, and back pain.
I am a native of Detroit and attended Wayne State University as an undergraduate, majoring in both Psychology and Biology. I attended the Department of Clinical and Health Psychology at the University of Florida in Gainesville from 1985 until 1990, working with Barbara Melamed, PhD. I completed a pre-doctoral clinical psychology internship (1989 – 1990) at the Henry Ford Health System in Detroit, and I spent one year (1990 – 1991) as a post-doctoral fellow in the Behavioral Medicine Program of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Michigan, working with Ovide Pomerleau, PhD. I have been a faculty member in the Department of Psychology at Wayne State University since 1991 and have been promoted through the ranks to Distinguished Professor in 2017.
I am a licensed clinical psychologist in Michigan, and I maintained a small practice for many years until I became the Director of Clinical Training in the Department in 2005–a position I maintained until 2022. I was very active in the clinical psychology training community during those years (e.g., on the Board of the Council of Directors of Clinical Psychology) as well as in the Society for Health Psychology (Division 38 of APA–Treasurer for 6 years and currently Chair of the Fellows Committee). I enjoy teaching and mentoring graduate students, and have graduated 46 Ph.D. students. I also conduct clinical supervision at our in-house training clinic and develop and test novel therapy interventions with students in my lab.
As one who studies disclosure, I also value it highly. So… on a final note, I’ll disclose that I am married, a father of four sons (twins born in 1990 and singletons in 1992 and 1994), try to play soccer, tennis, and pickleball, get injured often, and sing in a Methodist church contemporary group (tenor).
Location
5057 Woodward Avenue, Suite 7908
Detroit, Michigan 48202,
United States
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