With a goal to prove health behaviors effectively enhance mood for individuals with emotional disorders, BW psychology professor David Disabato is conducting research on members of the Northeast Ohio community. 

Disabato is researching on those with emotional disorders such as anxiety, PTSD and OCD. His additional goal is to determine which behaviors are most effective for these individuals. 

Baldwin Wallace 2024 graduate, Bri Meredith, and senior psychology and music theory major, Arthur Ross, are assisting Disabato with his research.  

“A lot of the decisions I have made, including this one, have been about trying to determine what I want to do after college,” Ross said. 

The team has gathered participants by posting flyers across the Northeast Ohio area and is also planning on having Instagram posts with potential Instagram ads. 

The research begins with a two-hour psychodiagnostics interview which is a comprehensive evaluation that diagnoses and clarifies psychological concerns, such as behavior, mood, emotional functioning and cognitive process.  

The research team will also reference the Diagnostics and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders to learn more about participants’ mental health history and the emotional disorders they may be experiencing. 

If a participant qualifies as having an emotional disorder, they then participate in experience sampling diaries using a Smartphone app.  

“We ask people multiple times a day for several days in a row how they are feeling, and what [health] behaviors they are doing on a daily basis,” Disabato said.  

Participants get pseudo-random notifications five times a day with an hour to complete the questioning. 

“We want to catch the [participants] as they are naturally living their life,” Disabato said.  

Disabato will be conducting a statistical analysis to calculate the data and interpret results once all the data is collected. 

“I have gotten out a lot of what I hoped, which is familiarizing myself with what it’s like to be working in a psychology lab and to be working with participants,” Ross said.