Our mission
The overarching mission of the CREATIV Lab is to promote access to and engagement with high quality, evidence-based mental health care for people who are underserved by the healthcare system.
We pursue this mission through the:
- development of novel psychosocial interventions, leveraging the expertise of community service providers, the potential of digital mental health tools, and the role of non-mental-health providers and lay workforce members in delivering evidence-based practices;
- advancement of equitable methods throughout the full research and practice lifecycles;
- amplification of community voices through Human-Centered Design and Community-Based Participatory Research methods;
- expansion of the mental health research pipeline by attracting and training researchers, with an emphasis on aging, community-based practice, and technology, and by providing a fertile environment for faculty, staff, interns, and graduate and undergraduate students.
The challenge
Successful interventions should be tailored to the specific needs of a broad array of patients and must be able to be easily and successfully delivered by a wide spectrum of clinicians. This increases the effectiveness of the interventions and allows for broader implementation of evidence-based treatments.
How we work
- We draw upon the latest advances in neuroscience, technology, and psychological science to develop targeted, streamlined behavioral interventions that any clinician can provide and that are readily available to a broad array of patients.
- We engage stakeholders in the community, health care, and patient populations to disseminate robust psychosocial treatments in diverse settings.
- We collaborate with partners from diverse academic disciplines, private industry, and health care to advance the science around the effectiveness, efficacy, and use of mobile mental health tools.
Our commitment to equity
Our lab acknowledges that all institutions, including ours, were founded within racist and colonial systems of oppression, and we are on an equity journey to interrogate our current practices and adopt new ones for change. The CREATIV Lab strives to practice and participate in equitable mental health research. We believe that every person should have access to mental health care and psychological safety, and we take action to include diverse voices in our work, pursue equitable research methods, and create safe spaces for underrepresented identities.
We put this commitment into practice across the full research process, from project ideation and partnerships through recruitment, data collection, analysis, and dissemination. We use human-centered design and community-based participatory research methods to center the voices of Black, BIPOC, older adults, people with disabilities, low-income communities, and LGBTQ+ individuals. We invest in recruiting representative samples, improving the accessibility of our study materials, and sharing findings beyond academic audiences, including through plain-language infographics.
Resources that inform our work include the Ruha Benjamin resource list, Psychology in Action’s diversity series, and the UW anti-racism resource list.
Our history
The CREATIV Lab was founded by Patricia Areán, PhD, an international expert in developing psychosocial treatments that are robust and easy to disseminate in diverse health care settings. The lab is now led by Patrick Raue, PhD, and is housed in the University of Washington Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences.