Teresa G. Vargas, MS

Teresa Vargas is a Clinical Fellow in Psychology at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. Clinically, her focus is on severe mental illness, including psychotic disorders and diagnostically complex presentations. She completed her doctoral training in Clinical Psychology at Northwestern University. Her research focuses on understanding systemic inequities, or disadvantages in one’s context and lived environments. Gaining knowledge on biological and neural consequences of systemic inequality could aid public dissemination efforts, as well as aid in framing and discerning the magnitude of the problem on an individual and societal level. Specifying biomarkers of impact of types of stressors, environments, and links to behavior and mental health outcomes could facilitate identification of targets for early intervention. Knowing which specific neural and biological factors are most relevant offers clues on where to intervene, with the hope of informing efficient allocation of resources on a health policy level. This could be particularly relevant when a developmental lens is incorporated, as this knowledge could help prevent and identify accumulating disadvantage and sequelae. As such, her work also has an emphasis on understanding how these systemic or ecological features relate to mental illness vulnerability, and identifying possible neural, biological, emotional and cognitive mechanisms through which this occurs. Her work has been supported through the National Institute of Mental Health’s Ruth L. Kirshstein National Research Service Award Individual Predoctoral Fellowship. She has received offers of research support from the Ford Foundation and was awarded an Early Career Award by the Schizophrenia International Research Society.