Assistant Professor
Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
Biography
BIRCWH Scholar: 2020 -2022
Jessica Maples-Keller, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. She completed a bachelor’s degree in Psychology with a minor in Women’s Studies at University of South Carolina and received her master’s degree and PhD in Clinical Psychology at the University of Georgia. Jessica completed her clinical psychology internship at the Medical University of South Carolina on the traumatic stress track. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Emory with the Emory Healthcare Veterans Program and Grady Trauma Project.
Jessica’s research uses translational models to understand and improve exposure-based treatment for PTSD. She is interested in individual differences that confer risk for PTSD, and particularly how to understand women’s significantly increased risk for trauma and stress related disorders. Jessica is interested in behavioral and pharmacological augmentation of evidence-based psychotherapy, including psychedelic augmentation such as MDMA and psilocybin. She is also interested in assessment and conceptualization of personality and psychopathology. Jessica is a practicing clinician specializing in exposure-based interventions for posttraumatic stress disorder.
During her training for the BIRCWH award, Jessica will examine the impact of estradiol on fear extinction recall and exposure therapy treatment response in women with PTSD. She will receive training in behavioral neuroendocrinology and psychophysiology in order to investigate how biological processes impact sex differences in PTSD risk. Her BIRCWH primary co-mentors are Dr. Sheila Rauch and Dr. Barbara Rothbaum.
Click on the link to see a complete list of Jessica’s published work in MyBibliography: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=(Jessica+Maples)+OR+Jessica+Maples-Keller