Clinical Psychologist Elizabeth Casline Joins ISGMH Faculty
Psychologist Elizabeth Casline, PhD, has joined the Institute for Sexual and Gender Minority Health and Wellbeing (ISGMH) at Northwestern University as a research assistant professor.
Casline is a child and adolescent clinical psychologist and implementation scientist who specializes in LGBTQ youth mental health care. Prior to joining ISGMH, Casline completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Center for Dissemination and Implementation Science at Northwestern.
“I am interested in improving youth mental health care through the development of implementation strategies that effectively train providers to use evidence-based practices,” says Casline. “My work focuses on understanding how well these strategies improve providers’ adoption and delivery of evidence-based practices, on identifying needed adaptations to evidence-based practices for LGBTQ youth, and on evaluating whether these practice changes ultimately improve youth mental health care.”
“Currently, the majority of youth receiving treatment in community mental health settings do not benefit from treatment and frequently drop out early from care. A barrier to addressing these challenges is that clinical judgement alone is insufficient for identifying when youth are not responding to care. For this reason, my work focuses a lot on implementing a practice called measurement-based care, which is when treatment outcomes are routinely monitored throughout therapy and the data is used to engage in shared decision making about treatment with youth and their families. Measurement-based care has been found to improve youth treatment outcomes, increase engagement, and has potential to prevent harm to youth through ineffective practice,” explains Casline.
Casline notes that this measurement-based care approach is particularly important for LGBTQ youth.
“Our evidence-based practices may require tailoring to the specific needs of LGBTQ youth, and therefore intentional monitoring of treatment outcomes helps ensure that tailoring has a positive impact,” she says.
In addition to improving how providers can incorporate data-driven approaches into mental health care for LGBTQ young people, Casline is also interested in the roles that parents and caregivers play in the lives of those young people.
“There are many parents who are invested in their children’s health and want to be involved. Many states have laws allowing young people to access short-term therapy without parental consent, which is essential to reaching young people who need mental health care. But the vast majority of young people who make it to a mental health provider have some sort of parental or caregiver involvement. So much more can be done in service to LGBTQ young people by helping their parents understand more about typical adolescent development, gender identity, sexual orientation, and sexual health care,” she said.
Casline expressed her enthusiasm for joining ISGMH because of the Institute's commitment to young LGBTQ people and to implementation science.
"ISGMH is a leading center for conducting rigorous research on LGBTQ populations,” said Casline. “It has an impressive suite of implementation science focused work as well, with a lot of internal expertise. I especially appreciate the Institute’s emphasis on recognizing that we can't just generate research, but we have to close the gap between what we know works and what is done in practice.”
Casline is part of ISGMH’s Teen Health Lab, led by Kathryn Macapagal, PhD, and she supports several projects within the Lab. Her appointment at Northwestern began September 1, 2024.
Read Elizabeth Casline's Research
Measurement-Based Care as a Tool to Detect and Prevent Harm in Youth Psychotherapy.
Casline E, Douglas S, van Sonsbeek M, Okamura K, Jensen-Doss A. Research on Child and Adolescent Psychopathology. 2024.
Consultation Content and Techniques for Measurement-Based Care Implementation in Youth Community Mental Health Settings.
Casline E, Woodard, GS, Lane E, Pollowitz S, Douglas S, Ehrenreich-May J, Ginsburg GS, Jensen-Doss A. Administration and Policy in Mental Health and Mental Health Services Research. 2024.
Characterizing Measurement-based Care Implementation Using Therapist Report.
Casline E, Woodard G, Patel ZS, Phillips D , Ehrenreich-May J, Ginsburg GS, Jensen-Doss A. Evidence-based Practice in Child and Adolescent Mental Health. 2023.