The Lifestyle, Environment, and Flourishing lab is interested in studying how lifestyle choices impact mental health and well-being. We conduct quantitative and qualitative research to explore…
The team is located at the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg.
There is an opening for a doctoral student to join the team for Fall 2025. Please see the Counseling Psychology Doctoral program website for more details.
I would also consider accepting a research-oriented master’s student into the Lab in Fall of 2025. Please see the Counseling Psychology Masters program website. Note that this program often provides a graduate assistantship with a stipend and tuition waiver and it also leads to clinical licensure in the state of Mississippi (among others).
Mapping out the longitudinal bi-directional connections between depression and social life
Mallory Lastrapes, a current 1st year PhD student and graduate of the Counseling Psychology master’s program and LEAF Lab P.I. Austen Anderson recently had a paper published in Psychological Reports. In line with the Surgeon General’s recent report on loneliness and the uptick in organizations seeking to address the importance of social life (e.g. Foundation for Social Connection), we sought to explore how social interaction, social functioning and depression were associated using three waves of data from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study. The data spanned almost 30 years and was focused on individuals who graduated from Wisconsin high schools in 1956. The average age of participants in the last wave (2011) was about 71 years old.
What set this project apart were the use of analyses that distinguished between stable trait-level associations versus fluctuations over time.
The key findings were:
While previous research has linked social factors to depression, this study used advanced modeling to better establish the directional effects over long time periods while separating stable trait levels from temporary fluctuations. The findings underscore how crucial it is to maintain an active social life and sense of social functioning as we age for protecting mental health. In an era of increasing loneliness and social disconnection, investing in building strong social bonds and communities may pay major dividends for preventing depression across the lifespan. The study reinforces that we are truly social beings who struggle to flourish without positive social connectedness.