Upon entering Gayle Beck's office, a student is likely to find a smiling, petite professor sitting in her desk chair, Indian style with her shoes off. This UB psychology professor has devoted her career to researching and helping those suffering from emotional disorders.
Born in Indiana and raised in the Midwest, Beck graduated from Brown University with a degree in psychology and education before obtaining her Ph.D. in clinical psychology from SUNY Albany.
She says it is while she was in Albany that she discovered her passion for studying emotional disorders.
"It was so exciting to be involved in seminal research that actually helped to revamp current theories of anxiety while I was in graduate school," Beck said.
Beck came to UB in 1993, where she is a professor in the honors psychology program and supervises research in the graduate program, while continuing her research on emotional disorders.
Her earlier research focused on anxiety as a source of sexual problems, but she has also studied topics as diverse as anxiety disorders among the elderly and panic disorders.
"My interests originally focused on understanding the interplay between thoughts, feelings and physiology, as these separate components influenced the experience of anxiety," Beck said. "Much of my early research was heavily theoretical and designed to understand the interplay between these response domains."
For the past six years, Beck has focused her research on emotional trauma, specifically on post-traumatic stress disorder among car accident victims.
Her research at the Center for Anxiety Research in Park Hall doubles as treatment for victims. At the center, clients undergo a thorough assessment followed by a group cognitive behavioral treatment program lasting 14 weeks. Here they are taught the skills to help in recovery from their motor vehicle accidents.
"I would like to make a difference in how to treat anxiety disorders and how effective our treatments are at reaching people who need them," Beck said.
Through her studies on post-traumatic stress disorder, Beck has been able to develop better ways to treat patients who are suffering. One particular treatment procedure is a completely new discovery in the field.
"Our recent work has shown that you can treat PTSD within a group therapy setting and obtain results that are just as effective as individual format CBT," Beck said. "This is an important step forward, given increasing concerns about the cost of mental health services."
Potentially, the group CBT program may be of use with survivors in a range of traumatic events, she said.
Above all, however, Beck enjoys working with students and inspiring them to enter into similar fields of study. Her junior colleagues, a team of psychology doctoral students acquiring first hand experience in clinical psychology, have proved instrumental in making the research clinic a success.
"Working with students is one of the best aspects of my job," Beck said. "Our doctoral students are terrific. They are smart, motivated and heavily invested in learning more about the science and the practice of clinical psychology."
Beck, who has two stepchildren and five grandchildren, cites her husband as her biggest fan.
"He tolerates my impossibly strange hours and preoccupations," she said. "Even though he is not an academic, he understands the pressures that I am under and helps to take up the slack at home when I am swamped with a deadline."
"He is my cheerleader and my confidante. What more could one ask for?" Beck said.
Beck is the only one in her family in the field of psychology, despite sharing her name with the famous psychologist Aaron Beck, the father of cognitive therapy.
At the anxiety center on campus Beck is currently transitioning to a new focus of research that involves victims of domestic abuse. Like the car accident trauma study, Beck is hoping to find better ways to improve treatment for domestic abuse victims.
