Biography

Annelise Madison is a PhD Candidate in Clinical Psychology (Health Track) at The Ohio State University. During the 2023 - 2024 academic year, she is a Clinical Psychology Intern at VA Boston Healthcare System. During her graduate career, she studied psychoneuroimmunology under the mentorship of Dr. Jan Kiecolt-Glaser at the Institute for Behavioral Medicine Research. She is interested in the physiological correlates of stress and depression, including inflammation, vaccine responses, acute stress reactivity, and the gut-brain axis. Most recently, she has focused on the social stress model, which spurs inquiry into:

  • The physiological and psychological impact of chronic, repetitive, or acute social stress, especially conflict or exclusion, in relation to close others vs. unfamiliar others

  • Pre-existing psychosocial factors that modulate the physiological or psychological impact of social stress

  • Individual differences that predict psychological sensitivity to chronic inflammation or acute inflammatory rises (provoked by various inflammatory stimuli, including social stressors)

  • Factors that facilitate habituation vs. sensitization to repeated social stressors

  • Psychoneuroimmunology-informed interventions that meaningfully reduce the physiological, immunological, and psychological impact of social stress

  • Dysfunctional gut-brain or brain-immune signaling that, especially in the context of chronic or repetitive social stress, may underlie medically unexplained symptoms (e.g., chronic pain, fatigue) or vulnerability to long-COVID

  • To address treatment resistance: (1) Reducing depressive/anxiety symptoms/perceived stress via evidence-based psychotherapeutic interventions (e.g., ACT) to facilitate better responses to immunomodulating treatments (e.g., for autoimmune disorders, cancer, and vaccines); (2) Identifying depressed patients who would best respond to proinflammatory cytokine antagonists, as opposed to standard-of-care depression treatment

  • Personalized, preventative medicine: Boosting stress resilience to help prevent autoimmune disease onset and inflammation-driven depressive symptoms, especially in those who are most at risk (e.g., those with genetic vulnerability, those who experience frequent social stress)