Treating Comorbid Substance Use and Emotional Disorders

Kate Wolitzky-Taylor, Ph.D., is a licensed clinical psychologist and Associate Professor in the UCLA Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences and Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior. With over 100 publications and continuous NIH funding for her research since her predoctoral training, she has extensive experience in the development, evaluation, and implementation of cognitive and behavioral therapies (CBT) for anxiety disorder and comorbid substance use disorders (SUD). Her research expertise was developed during her doctoral training in the Laboratory for the Study of Anxiety Disorders at the University of Texas at Austin, where she was funded by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) on a National Research Service Award (F31) to examine the efficacy of self-administered treatments for pathological worry. She then completed her clinical internship at the Medical University of South Carolina, where she was funded on a NIMH training grant (T32) focusing on the research and treatment of trauma-related problems. She then completed a 3-year postdoctoral research fellowship in the Anxiety and Depression Research Center at UCLA, in which she was Project Director of a 10-year, multi-site, NIMH-funded longitudinal study examining common and specific risk factors for emotional disorders. She developed expertise in the nature and treatment of comorbid anxiety and SUD through her Early Career Development Award (K23) funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), in which she developed and evaluated a CBT program for anxiety disorders to be delivered in SUD specialty clinics to those with comorbid anxiety and substance use disorders. Since then, she has received continuous funding for several NIH-funded studies aimed at developing and evaluating novel behavioral treatments for comorbid anxiety disorders and SUD. In addition to her innovative program of work in the treatment of comorbid anxiety and SUD, for which she received the Sobell Innovative Addictions Research Award from the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies, she is the Center co-Director for a NIMH-funded ALACRITY Center that aims to optimize a digitally-focused, tiered model of care for anxiety and depression among community college students. In addition to her research, she has an extensive history of providing clinical training and supervision to clinical psychology graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, psychiatry residents, and masters' level clinicians in CBT for anxiety disorders, depression, and comorbid emotional disorders and SUD. Dr. Wolitzky-Taylor also treats patients in the UCLA Faculty Practice, specializing in CBT for anxiety, depression, and comorbid emotional disorder/SUD treatment.