News

Congratulations to Viktoria Bourmpoulia on submitting a grant proposal, titled: Understanding Patients’ Experiences of Suicidal Crises and the Therapeutic Alliance project to the American Psychological Association, Division 38 Graduate Student Health Psychology Research Award! Wishing you the best of luck with the review process.

Congratulations and welcome to the new RAs who have joined the lab: Hanyu Zhang and Avraham Frohlich! We’re excited to have you on board and look forward to achieving great things together!

Congratulations to our research assistant Angel Wei on submitting a grant proposal, titled: Learning from Clinicians’ Experiences: Clinicians’ Self-Confidence, Competency, and Experience of the Therapeutic Alliance with High-Risk Patients to the International Honor Society in Psychology Graduate Research Grants! Wishing you the best of luck with the review process.

Between November 8th and 11th, 2025, Dr. Sarah Bloch-Elkouby chaired the symposium at the IASR/AFSP International Summit on Suicide Research in Boston, Massachusetts. This global summit aims to unite leading researchers in suicide prevention and foster innovative, interdisciplinary collaborations.

In November 2025, Dr. Sarah Bloch-Elkouby was a keynote speaker at a conference in Lausanne, Switzerland, as part of ongoing international efforts to advance suicide prevention research and clinical practice.

Congratulations and welcome to the new Ferkauf Doctoral Students who have joined the lab: Charlize Dilmanian, Dov Frank, Yuechun Yao, and Ryan Phelan. We are excited to have all the new doctoral students on board and look forward to working with them in the future!

Congratulations and welcome to the new RAs who have joined the lab: Xinran Gao! We’re excited to have you on board and look forward to achieving great things together!

Congratulations and welcome to the new RAs who have joined the lab: Lilian Guo, Chi Kyu Lee! We’re excited to have you on board and look forward to achieving great things together!

At the same time, we’d like to express our gratitude and best wishes to Rebecca Barnes. As she prepares to depart, we want to acknowledge her valued contributions to the lab — she will be greatly missed. The team wishes her all the best in her future endeavors!

Dr. Bloch-Elkouby moderated the plenary Friend or foe? An update and future directions on AI applications in psychotherapy research with Dr. Aafjes-van Doorn. She presented a paper in the Preventing Setbacks: Using AI and LLMs to Address Negative Developments in Mental Health Care panel.

Doctoral student Ronit Shvarzman was awarded a trainee conference travel award and traveled to Krakow, Poland, to attend the 2025 SPR Conference and be recognized at the North American Chapter Business Meeting.

The following Lab RAs presented their posters at the 2025 SPR Conference: Jimmy Chen, Rebecca Barnes, Aditya Bhise, Stephanie Prekas, Jade Wei, Wendy Guo, Runqin Shi, Ronit Shvarzman, and Jason Tortora.

In the 2025 SPR conference, Ronit Shvarzman was awarded the Enrico Jones Trainee Award. Alexis Aberman and Talia Rosen’s John and Elaine Altmaier Depression Research Grant was also featured by NASPR at the chapter meeting.

Congratulations to Alexis Aberman as a recipient of the Society for the Advancement of Psychotherapy’s Student Research Grant. Her qualitative dissertation project will focus on individuals with lived experience who view themselves as recovered from suicidality. Her research will explore patient experiences of what they view as contributing to their recovery from suicidality, both inside and outside of treatment. This grant will allow for the compensation of participants and the compensation of Dr. Usrula Whiteside, an expert with lived experience who will serve as a consultant to the research team.

Congratulations to Alexis Aberman and Talia Rosen have been named as the recipients of the North American Society for Psychotherapy Research John and Elaine Altmaier Depression Research Grant. Their qualitative research project will explore the impacts of self-compassion and the therapeutic alliance on recovery from suicidal ideation and behaviors. The study will involve interviews with former patients who consider themselves recovered from suicidality, as well as the therapists whom they credit as instrumental in their recovery. After qualitative data from interviews have been collected and analyzed, participants will be invited to participate in focus groups, during which these individuals with lived experience will provide invaluable feedback on ways to implement and disseminate the insights gained throughout the study. This grant will allow for the compensation of patient and therapist participants, as well as consultation from Dr. Ursula Whiteside, an expert with lived experience.

Congratulations to all of the doctoral student lab members for the incredible externship sites they have matched with for 2025-2026!

Alexis Aberman - NYU Langone Military Family Center; Jason Tortora - Kingsboro Psychiatric Center; Ronit Shvarzman - Pratt Institute of Art Counseling Center; Adelaide Jones - Nassau University Medical Center; Talia Rosen - New York Presbyterian Westchester Division, Inpatient Horizon Unit; Theo Mack- Academics West School-Based Clinical Psychology; Runqin Shi - Pace University Counseling Center; Laura Baruch - Pace University Counseling Center

The Bloch-Elkouby Lab for Suicide Prevention and Research is delighted to welcome four new Ferkauf Adult Psy D students to the lab! Welcome, Laura Baruch, Theo Mack, Talia Rosen, and Runqin Shi– we’re thrilled to have you on the team!

Dr. Bloch-Elkouby will lead a structured discussion about the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) with Dr. Aafjes-van Doorn at the upcoming SPR International Annual Meeting in Ottawa, Canada, June 26 – 29, 2024.

We are thrilled to share that on of our incredible research assistants, Runqin Shi, will be starting her PSYD in Clinical Psychology at Ferkauf this Fall. Please join us in congratulating Runqin on this achievement! We can’t wait to see what lies ahead.

We are delighted to announce that our wonderful lab coordinator, Inna Goncearenco, is starting an exciting new journey as she begins her PhD in Clinical Psychology at George Washington University this Fall. Inna’s expertise and passion have been invaluable to our team, and we are confident that she will continue to excel in her doctoral studies. Please join us in congratulating Inna on this achievement and wishing her all the best in her future endeavors!

We are thrilled to announce that several of our talented lab students have successfully matched with prestigious externship sites. Please join us in congratulating Ronit, Alexis, Adelaide and Shibani on their well-deserved success! We are incredibly proud of their accomplishments!

Ronit Shvarzman matched with the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai – Psychosis Risk Program

Alexis Aberman matched with the New York-Presbyterian-Westchester Behavioral Health Center Track 6: Inpatient DBT on the Self-Injurious Behavior Unit

Adelaide Jones matched with the Brooklyn College Counseling Center

Shibani Datta matched with the Montefiore - Adult Literacy Program

Interested in learning more about suicide prevention and resiliency? Join us on Thursday, 4/4/2024 for a panel discussion, light dinner, and networking! This event is co-sponsored by the Yeshiva University Office of Alumni Affairs, Ferkauf Graduate School of Psychology, Wurzweiler School of Social Work, and the Yeshiva University Counseling Center and will feature Dr. Bloch-Elkouby and several other experts in suicide prevention.

Learn more about the presenters and register here

Congratulations to our amazing Research Assistant, Lucy Walsh, on getting matched for a prestigious internship at Mount Sinai Morningside in New York! We know that you will be an outstanding intern and we wish you great success!

Congratulations, Inna, on the acceptance of your abstract “Hidden Barriers: Exploring Self-Disgust and Disgust with Others in Individuals with Concealed vs. Disclosed Past-Month Suicidal Ideation” for poster presentation at the 2024 APA Annual Meeting in New York, May 4 - 8.

Dr. Bloch-Elkouby will present preliminary findings about the therapeutic alliance and clinical judgment in therapeutic encounters with AI-powered virtual patients.

Congratulations, Alexis, on the acceptance of your abstract on the role of self-compassion as a change mechanism in suicide-specific psychotherapies for poster presentation at the SPR International Annual Meeting in Ottawa, Canada, June 26 – 29, 2024.

Dr. Bloch-Elkouby will chair a symposium “Using cutting edge AI research to enhance clinical training and suicide prevention” at the upcoming ADAA 2024 conference in Boston on April 11 - 14, 2024.

Dr. Bloch-Elkouby was awarded the Bergin and Garfield Emerging Scholar Award by Society for Psychotherapy Research.

American Foundation for Suicide Prevention awarded $1.5M FOCUS grant for the project “Effectivness of Diagnostic vs. Symptom-Only Suicide Crisis Syndrome Assessment (SCS-A) for post-discharge suicide prevention (Co-investigator: Dr. Bloch-Elkouby).