Bahr Weiss

Associate Professor of Psychology and Human Development Visiting Foreign Professor, Vietnam National University Senior Fellow, Vanderbilt Institute for Global Health Professor Weiss’ research focuses on child psychopathology, in particular intervention for comorbid internalizing and externalizing problems, and cultural influences on the development and treatment of psychopathology. Particular interests include development of a model to describe factors influencing the sustainability of task-shifting mental health interventions (i.e., interventions implemented by non-mental health professionals, such as teachers or nurses) after external support is withdrawn. Much of this work currently focuses on Vietnam and Southeast Asia, where he and his colleagues (a) have conducted the first nationally representative child mental health epidemiology survey in Vietnam in order to determine the impact of urbanization factors on the development of child psychopathology, (b) a longitudinal study, including colleagues from UCLA, UC-Davis, Vietnam National University and the Danang Psychiatric Hospital to determine how cultural factors influence the effects of stress and coping on the development of mental health symptoms in adolescents; (c) developing and evaluating a multi-province, culturally appropriate intervention for opioid addiction; (d) implementing a national monitoring system for mass psychogenic illness to identify why this phenomenon occurs in Vietnam at approximately 10 times the rate as in the U.S.; (e) development and evaluation of school-based mental health intervention infrastructure. As part of his work in Vietnam, he has been centrally involved in development of the first Ph.D. clinical psychology training program in Vietnam. Ph.D. (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1988)