Our Research Lab
The BEAHR Lab conducts research that broadly aims to shift the current biomedical paradigm and integrate a human rights approach in mental health policies and practices. Specifically, their research addresses 1) the ethical and medical-legal issues that arise in organized psychiatry because of academic-industry relationships and 2) the ways in which commercialized science reinforces epistemic injustice and undermines an appreciation for the moral and political context of physical and emotional suffering.
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Lisa Cosgrove, PhD is a Clinical Psychologist, Professor, and Faculty Fellow at the Applied Ethics Center at the University of Massachusetts, Boston where she teaches courses on psychiatric diagnosis and psychopharmacology. She is a co-founder of the Centre for Mental Health, Human Rights and Social Justice, an international Centre and multi-institutional platform dedicated to the study of rights-based approaches to mental health law, policy, and practices. Dr. Cosgrove was Research Fellow at the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, Harvard University (2010-2015) and served as a consultant (2017-2020) to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health, child psychiatrist Dainius Puras. Her research addresses the ethical and medical-legal issues that arise in organized psychiatry because of academic-industry relationships.
More recently, Lisa and her colleagues have examined the evidence for questionnaire-based screening for mental health conditions and the evidence for the safety and efficacy of digital aripiprazole and digital phenotyping. She has published over 100 articles and book chapters, co-edited 3 casebooks on issues related to psychiatry and ethics, and is co-author, with Bob Whitaker, of Psychiatry under the influence: Institutional corruption, social injury and prescriptions for reform She, along with her doctoral student, Emily Wheeler, received a Distinguished Publication Award, given by the Association for Women in Psychology, for their paper, “Industry’s colonization of psychiatry.” Professor Cosgrove’s research has received significant attention from the national and international media and she was the PI for an RO3 NIH grant (through the Agency for Healthcare and Research Quality), “A cross-sectional study of clinical practice guidelines for depression: Is guideline quality associated with independence from industry?”
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The BEAHR Lab Motto: No pressure, only opportunity.
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