Jennifer L. Hughes, PhD, MPH

Jennifer L. Hughes, PhD, MPH, is a psychologist and clinical scholar in behavioral health at Nationwide Children’s Hospital and an associate professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Health at The Ohio State University College of Medicine and the Division of Health Behavior and Health Promotion at the College of Public Health. Broadly, Dr. Hughes’s research explores the efficacy and effectiveness of psychosocial treatments for building resilience, the prevention and treatment of youth depression, and addressing suicide in youth.

Dr. Hughes is part of the Methods Core in the NIMH P50 Center for Accelerating Suicide Prevention in Real-world Settings (ASPIRES: PIs Jeff Bridge and Cynthia Fontanella), which aims to accelerate the development and use of effective interventions to reduce suicide in children and adolescents. Dr. Hughes is a co-developer of two evidence-based treatments, one for relapse prevention of depression in children and adolescents (Relapse Prevention CBT; Kennard, Hughes, & Foxwell, 2016) and one utilizing family-based CBT for suicidal youth and their parents (SAFETY; Asarnow et al., 2015, 2017, 2021; Hughes & Asarnow, 2022). Dr. Hughes is also the recipient of a young investigator grant from the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention to adapt and test an intervention designed to prevent future suicide attempts in adolescents.

Dr. Hughes’s most recent work has focused on universal suicide prevention in youth through a school-based mental health promotion and suicide prevention program called Youth Aware of Mental Health (YAM). She is an international trainer for YAM, working with the intervention developers to disseminate this program in the United States (Texas and Montana), Australia and India. Dr. Hughes is a past chair (2017-18) of the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies Child and Adolescent Depression Special Interest Group and has served as the newsletter editor (2017-21), APA convention program chair (2013-15), and member-at-large for science and practice (2023-26) for the American Psychological Association (APA) Division 53, Society for Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology.

Youth suicide prevention, intervention development, implementation science, universal school-based youth suicide prevention, parent-based interventions, child and adolescent depression, depression and suicide prevention in primary care

• MPH, Global Public Health, UT Health Science Center at Houston
• Postdoctoral Fellowship, Clinical Child Psychology, UCLA Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, 2013
• PhD, Clinical Psychology, UT Southwestern Medical Center, 2010
• BA, Psychology, Baylor University, 2003

Hughes, J.L., Horowitz, L.M., Ackerman, J.P., Adrian, M.C., Camp, J.V., & Bridge, J.A. (2023). State of the Art Review: Screening, Assessment, and Intervention in Suicidal Youth. Invited review for The British Medical Journal, 381;e070630.

Hughes, J.L., Trombello, J.M., Kennard, B.D., Claassen, C., Slater, H., Rezaeizadeh, A., Wakefield, S.M., & Trivedi, M.T. (2023). Suicide risk assessment and suicide risk management protocol for the Texas Youth Depression and Suicide Research Network. Contemporary Clinical Trials Communications, June 2023, 101151.

Hughes, J.L., & Asarnow, J.A. (2022). SAFETY Intervention: Incubator Model Case Illustration. Cognitive and Behavioral Practice, 29(1), 198-213.

Trivedi, M.H., Nandy, K., Mayes, T.L., Wang, T., Forbes, K.A., Anderson, J.R., Fuller, A., & Hughes, J.L. (2022). Youth Aware of Mental Health (YAM) program with Texas adolescents: Depression, anxiety, and substance use outcomes.

Lindow, J.C., Hughes, J.L., South, C., Gutierrez, L., Bannister, E., Trivedi, M.H., & Byerly, M.J. (2019). Feasibility and acceptability of the Youth Aware of Mental Health (YAM) intervention in US adolescents. Archives of Suicide Research, 4, 1-16.

McCauley, E., Berk, M.S., Asarnow, J., Adrian, M., Cohen, J., Korslund, K., Avina, C., Hughes, J., Harned, M., Gallop, R., & Linehan, M.M. (2018). Efficacy of Dialectical Behavior Therapy for adolescents at high risk for suicide: A randomized clinical trial. JAMA Psychiatry, 75(8), 777-785.

Hughes, J.L., Anderson, N.L., Wiblin, J.L., & Asarnow, J.R. (2017). Predictors and outcomes of psychiatric hospitalization in youth presenting to the emergency department with suicidality. Suicide and Life Threatening Behavior, 47(2), 193-204. doi: 10.1111/sltb.122

Asarnow, J., Hughes, J.L., Babeva, K., & Sugar, C. (2017). Cognitive-behavioral family treatment for suicide attempt prevention: A randomized controlled trial. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychology, 56(6), 506-514.

Asarnow, J.R., Atkins, M., Hoagwood, K.E., Hughes, J.L., Kazak, A.E., Lochman, J.E., Miranda, J.M., Piacentini, J., Portwood, S.G., Stancin, T., Tynan, D.,& Wysocki, T. (2015). Psychological science and innovative strategies for informing health care redesign: A policy brief. Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology, 44(6), 923-932.

Kennard, B.D., Hughes, J.L., & Foxwell, A.F. (2016). CBT for Depression in Children and Adolescents: A Guide to Relapse Prevention. New York, NY: Guilford Press.