Kirsten Gilbert, PhD

Kirsten Gilbert, PhD, is a licensed clinical psychologist and an assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Washington University in St. Louis School of Medicine. She completed her undergraduate degree at Stanford University, her PhD in Clinical Psychology at Yale University, her clinical internship and postdoctoral fellowship at Northwestern Feinberg School of Medicine, and a postdoctoral fellowship at Washington University in St. Louis School of Medicine.

Dr. Gilbert’s research examines the phenomenology, clinical characteristics, and longitudinal developmental course of the transdiagnostic mechanism of “too much self-control” from early childhood through adolescence. From a developmental psychopathology approach, she examines cognitive, social, and emotional facets of overcontrol, including the parent-child relationship, in relation to psychiatric illness; her research uses behavioral, observational, and neural (electroencephalogram and event-related potential; EEG/ERP) methods.

In a second line of clinical translational work, Dr. Gilbert investigates the efficacy of Radically Open Dialectical Behavior Therapy (RO DBT), a novel psychosocial treatment that directly targets overcontrol. She is a member of the RO DBT U.S. senior clinician team and on the international RO DBT research committee. She is currently working with the developer of RO DBT, Dr. Thomas Lynch, and colleagues to adapt RO DBT for adolescents. She won the first Radically Open Institute Research Award at the inaugural RO DBT conference and has ongoing work testing efficacy and mechanistic change in RO DBT. She also has an RO DBT clinic where she sees adolescents.