Scott Monroe

Since his early graduate training in clinical psychology, Scott Monroe has been focused on the problem of depression—fascinated by the episodic nature of the condition, vexed by its devastating effects. Both in his early clinical work and research, he witnessed scores of talented and wonderful people who fell into the deep throes of depression, recovered, and unfortunately for many, relapsed, often time and again. Although initially seeking to understand depression from a genetic perspective, Monroe found such an approach incomplete for explaining the transitions—the dramatic shifts—into and out of an episode of major depression. As a complementary strategy, he adopted the ideas and methods of life stress to help understand the psychosocial contexts in which major depression may, or may not, be provoked. With the sponsorship of the Guggenheim Fellowship, he will be conducting research on people who develop depression for the very first time, with the goal of discovering early indicators of recurrence risk.

Scott M. Monroe is the William K. Warren Foundation Professor of Psychology at the University of Notre Dame. He received his B.A. from Saint Olaf College (mathematics and psychology), his doctorate from the University at Buffalo (clinical psychology), and completed his clinical internship at the University of Washington. Prior to joining the faculty of Notre Dame, he was on the Psychology faculty at the University of Oregon and the University of Pittsburgh. He has published widely on the topic of depression, as well as on life stress theory and methodologies. Most recently with his former graduate student, Kate Harkness, he tackled theoretical issues involving life stress and recurrence of depression (Psychological Review, 2005), as well as the basic construct of recurrence in depression (Psychological Review, 2011). He has served as an Associate Editor for the Journal of Abnormal Psychology and the Psychological Bulletin, as a member of the editorial board of several journals, and was a standing member of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Adult Psychopathology and Disorders of Aging Study Section. Early in his career he received an NIMH New Investigator’s Research Award, and more recently NIMH support for research on life stress and cognitive factors in depression. He is a past president of the Society for Research in Psychopathology, a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science, and has been a Clinical Psychology Training Program Director for approximately seventeen years. He currently is a member of the Committee on Scientific Awards, Board of Scientific Affairs, for the American Psychological Association.

Monroe lives in South Bend, Indiana, and Eugene, Oregon, with his wife, Anne Simons. They travel with and visit their daughters, Caity and Lizzy, as often as possible.