What Would You Fight For: Notre Dame psychologists combating America's mental health crisis
Austin Wyman ’23 was young when the mental health crisis hit home. A struggling family member reached out to a provider for help, but with no immediately available appointments, the relative soon had a mental health episode. The situation ended in the death of two of Wyman’s family members, and left the rest of them reeling.
Now, Wyman is working to ensure other families don’t experience that kind of tragedy.
Wyman is one of 60 doctoral students in the psychology program, which also includes clinical science, developmental psychology, and cognition, brain, and behavior, but that number is about to grow with the development of the Wilma and Peter Veldman Family Psychology Clinic.
The new clinic, scheduled to open in 2026 in South Bend’s East Bank neighborhood, will bring together faculty experts focused on developing innovative methods for the prevention and treatment of mental health issues, and on informing the practice of clinical care across the nation. The new clinic will unite existing work at Notre Dame’s William J. Shaw Center for Children and Families with new research on substance use and other developing areas, and it will foster collaboration among experts focused on evidence-based treatments to mental health issues.
“Our approach at this clinic will involve looking at the whole human—considering a person in context, looking at their whole family and their whole life—and how we can treat not just that condition, but really their life in context and in the context of their community,” said Sarah Mustillo, the I.A. O’Shaughnessy Dean of the College of Arts and Letters.
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