Liza Hinchey, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow in the Wayne State University School of Medicine’s Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurosciences, has been selected for the seventh cohort of the Michigan Integrative Well-Being and Inequality Training Program to study how being socially connected helps people with serious mental illnesses such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and major depression recover from stress.
Liza Hinchey
Her project will focus on people participating in “clubhouse” programs—community-based settings in which individuals with serious mental illness engage in meaningful social and work-related activities. During the first six months, the study will track changes in both mental health and biological markers of stress, such as heart rate patterns, hormone levels and inflammation.
“By following participants over time, this research aims to understand how improvements in social connection are linked to both better mental health and healthier stress responses in the body,” Dr. Hinchey said. “The goal is to identify different pathways to recovery and use this knowledge to improve community-based programs and develop more effective, personalized treatments for people living with serious mental illness and trauma-related disorders.”
The program, hosted by the University of Michigan School of Public Health’s Center for Social Epidemiology and Population Health, selects no more than 12 trainees per cohort. It is funded by the National Institutes of Health Office of Behavioral and Social Science Research and the National Institute of Mental Health to advance research at the intersection of mental and physical health. It is the only program of its kind focused specifically on developing methodological expertise in integrative health research.
The program includes an intensive meeting at the University of Michigan on May 11-14, followed by ongoing mentorship and collaboration with interdisciplinary faculty through April 2027.
The program also emphasizes health disparities, community-based research and translational science, with the goal of improving care for individuals with co-occurring mental and physical health conditions.
Dr. Hinchey also received the Richardson-Lowman Serious Mental Illness Research Grant from the American Psychological Foundation, which will support completion of the trauma and community therapy pilot study.
Her research focuses on identifying biopsychosocial mechanisms that link trauma, social connectedness and stress physiology to mental and physical health outcomes. Her work centers on serious mental illness, in which individuals often experience both high rates of trauma and chronic physical health conditions.
“Many individuals with these conditions also experience trauma and physical health problems, which are connected to how the body responds to stress over time. One of the strongest predictors of recovery is social connectedness—feeling supported and part of a community—but we still don’t fully understand how these social experiences ‘get under the skin’ to improve both mental and physical health,” she said.
Dr. Hinchey uses a transdiagnostic approach, examining shared pathways across disorders rather than studying conditions in isolation. Her research integrates stress neurobiology, social processes and real-world community settings.
She graduated from Wayne State’s Counseling Psychology doctoral program in April 2024 and is now a postdoctoral research fellow in the department’s Stress, Trauma and Anxiety Research Clinic, led by Professor Arash Javanbakht, M.D., and the Pernice Recovery Research Lab led by College of Education Professor of Theoretical and Behavior Foundations Francesca Pernice, Ph.D.