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Q&A: Sass Supports Mental Health Needs of Rural East Texas

About 40 percent of Americans are affected by anxiety disorders, according to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America. Research by UT Tyler’s Dr. Sarah Sass attempts to promote interventions that reduce and prevent anxiety and depression, while also promoting mental health. In the following question and answer segment, learn more about Sass and how her research impacts East Texas.

Can you please tell us about yourself? 

I am an associate professor of psychology and the coordinator of the Master of Science degree program in clinical psychology here at UT Tyler. I joined the University as an assistant professor in 2010 immediately after graduating with my Ph.D. It’s amazing to me that I have already been here for a little over a decade!

I grew up in Superior, Wisconsin, which is in northern Wisconsin along Lake Superior, with my parents and older sister. We lived within an hour of my grandparents and some of my mom’s 10 brothers and sisters. After graduating from high school, I slowly moved south, completing my B.A. in psychology at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis and my Ph.D. in clinical psychology at the University of Illinois in Champaign. It was in Illinois that I met my partner, Dr. Amentahru Wahlrab, who is an associate professor in the political science and history department here at UT Tyler. We have a 5-year-old son.

What are your teaching and research areas?

I mostly teach graduate students in our clinical psychology M.S. and Ph.D programs, including applied therapy skills courses, cultural diversity and a course about cognitive behavioral treatment approaches. I teach one undergraduate course in abnormal psychology. I consider research mentorship a form of teaching, and I work with both undergraduate and graduate students in research. At the broadest level, my research attempts to promote interventions that reduce and prevent psychological distress, like anxiety and depression, while also promoting psychological well-being.

How did you end up in academia? Did you always want to become a professor?

My parents joked that I knew I would be a professor or a teacher from a young age, because I used to play “school” on our front porch and would play the role of the teacher with my neighborhood friends. From my early years, I have enjoyed people and learning about their life journeys and what makes them “tick.” I was also a bookworm and loved to learn about the world vicariously through books, so I figured I would work with people and books somehow in the future. 

In my senior year of high school, I thought I would either become a novelist, a journalist or do research in biology or medicine. As I got exposed to college classes, I realized that psychology allowed me to combine my love of people with my love of research, and I was excited to find a field that joined these two in the way that it does. I didn’t actually know I wanted to become a professor until near the end of my Ph.D. program, when I had to get serious about job applications and decide whether to apply to clinical or academic jobs in a medical center or university setting.

Why do you like teaching in general?

I love teaching at UT Tyler in part because the student body is so diverse, with over 50% being first-generation college students. My mom didn’t have the opportunity to attend college in her youth and never earned a college degree. She instilled in me a love of learning and made sure college was on my radar from very early on. I’ve noticed that most of the students at UT Tyler don’t take college or graduate school for granted. The majority of the students that I have worked with work very hard, value their education and are respectful of faculty, staff and fellow students, which makes supporting them in their educational journey a true joy!

How did you discover UT Tyler?

My partner and I were on the academic job market at the same time in two different fields (clinical psychology and international relations/political science). We had what academia calls the “dual body problem” – two married people trying to get academic jobs at the same time at the same place. We used a “partner search” feature in Inside Higher Ed jobs that attempted to find academic jobs for us in the same place. There were only three places in the U.S. in 2009–2010 when we were applying that had jobs in the same area, and UT Tyler was the only place where we would be at the same school, not just in the same city or in two adjacent cities, so we jumped at the chance to apply!

Why do you like working at UT Tyler?

I think UT Tyler is special in a lot of ways. It is small enough that you can get to know your students by name. It’s pretty easy to know many faculty and staff, not just in your own area but across the University. You can say hi to administrators like your chair, dean, provost or president and they actually know who you are. Some of my friends are working at large universities where this isn’t true above the department chair level. I think this all leads to a sense of belonging that is so essential in a workplace and in folks investing more in their work, and ultimately in students,’ each other’s and the community’s success.

What is your research all about? What's its importance?

My research mostly focuses on interventions that can reduce and prevent high levels of anxiety and depression and increase psychological well-being. These interventions may be especially helpful in rural areas or areas with extra barriers to mental health care. This work is important because anxiety and mood disorders are among the most prevalent mental health issues, with approximately 30% of adults and youth diagnosed with an anxiety disorder, and 20% diagnosed with a mood disorder at some point in their lifetime. 

During the COVID-19 global pandemic, people have been more than three times as likely to experience significant anxiety or depression problems. A sobering statistic is that, of people who experience mental health issues, most are not receiving any treatment. In rural areas, it is more common for adults and youth to experience poverty and other barriers to quality mental healthcare which help explain lack of treatment.

My student research team and I address these problems in collaboration with people in psychology, neuroscience, education, engineering and counseling. A key motivation running through the work is for interventions to be accessible to underserved populations, such as individuals in rural areas of East Texas.

Some examples of our work include developing effective ways to train attention to positive information, which tends to be avoided or suppressed in people negotiating high levels of anxiety and depression. We have done this using computerized attention-training interventions and mindfulness training and have shown that such training can result in improvement in anxiety and depression symptoms. We use neuroscience (such as EEG) methods in this work alongside self-reported symptoms and behavioral performance on tasks.

In collaboration with Dr. Premananda Indic in engineering, we are looking at how well physiological data (EEG, heart rate, movement or actigraphy data) can differentiate anxiety and depression symptoms and predict attention-training treatment outcome. We also partner with Dr. Indic in his work using movement data from smart watches to predict suicidal ideation in depressed individuals. 

In collaboration with Dr. Staci Zolkoski in education, we have found that mindfulness meditation training can prevent anxiety symptoms in adolescents during a stressful time, like STAAR testing, compared to waitlist group who did not practice mindfulness. In collaboration with a team from education, psychology and counseling, we have explored how social and emotional learning, which supplements and enhances academic learning in K–12 educational systems, can increase well-being, such as by increasing prosocial behaviors and strengthening social relationships, in youth in rural areas with high poverty rates. 

What led you to this type of research?

While growing up, I knew folks who struggled with mental health issues who experienced poverty and had various barriers to mental health care. These experiences made me want to better understand mental health, barriers to mental healthcare and ways to help people who struggle with mental health issues. 

What are your ultimate goals pertaining to this research?

We want to reach underserved populations with barriers to mental healthcare; help reduce rates of anxiety, depression and suicide in rural areas; and increase well-being and and social connectedness in youth and adults who are most at risk.

What advice do you have for UT Tyler students? Any special advice to those who are interested in your field of study?

Try and learn as much as you can about yourself, the world and diverse perspectives while you are in college or graduate school. Try and take advantage of as many opportunities as you can as a student—all those offices in the UC? They are there to support your success! Join student groups and get involved. Try and be useful to someone or something other than yourself. I have been lucky in life to find a profession that allows me to get paid for doing what I love. If you can figure out how to align your strengths, passion and values and get paid for it --- this is a really sweet place to practice a profession from.

For those interested in psychology generally—try and remember that a strength and a weakness of psychology is a focus on the individual. Be sure to round out your education with an understanding of how factors outside of a person, such as the history and systems and cultures a person is embedded within, matter. Psychology is catching up on making space for this, but has a long way to go. If students are specifically interested in a master’s or Ph.D. in clinical psychology, I would encourage them to consider volunteering with agencies or groups working with populations they are interested in working with in the future, taking classes in topics that stimulate their interests and reaching out to faculty who conduct research that is aligned with their interests.

What are your hobbies/interests?

I love to run while listening to podcasts and doing yoga, and I have fun kicking the soccer ball around, hiking or going for a bike ride with my family. My husband and I try to be intentional in learning about issues that affect our area and the world, and find ways to engage with these issues that are constructive, such as advocacy or volunteering. I try to read for fun and have been enjoying creating art, like paintings on canvas, with my son. Staying at home more during COVID has helped me maintain a regular mindfulness practice and stay regularly connected in a more creative way with family and friends – both near and far.

#CEP